


dry your eyes and love you warm

by Ellessey



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blow Jobs, Bottom Bucky Barnes, Bottom Steve Rogers, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: The First Avenger, Emotional Sex, First Kiss, First Time, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Hand Jobs, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, Porn with Feelings, Pre-World War II Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Romantic Fluff, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:16:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23479831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellessey/pseuds/Ellessey
Summary: "Hey, come here," Steve says, pulling Bucky close enough to wrap his arms around his waist. Bucky sinks into him, forehead resting on the crown of Steve's head. "How can I help?"He's not even thinking about it at first, about the way he helped before, but then Bucky breathes warm and heavy in Steve's hair and suddenly it'sallhe's thinking about—those little gasps Bucky had let out, and the way his skin had flushed pink while Steve brought him off.Bucky's arms get a little tighter around him now, like maybe he's remembering too. And he must be, because then he says, "Could you… Stevie, would you mind? Like before?"--When Bucky needs him, Steve will be there. In any city, in any century, in every way that Bucky will have him.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 402
Kudos: 964





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Otis Redding's _That's How Strong My Love Is_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Content Warning** : Steve and Bucky are underage (16 and 17) at the start of this chapter. In the rest of the fic they are over eighteen.

It starts when Bucky is seventeen, and Steve is sixteen. When Bucky is lanky limbs and new muscles and clinging baby fat in the soft lines of his chin, and Steve is helpless in the face of it all. It starts when Bucky comes through Steve's window taut as a stretched wire, with stormy eyes and bruised knuckles because his pa drank himself past mean and into violent again, and Bucky has nowhere to put it all. 

He sits with his back to Steve's wall, long arms wrapped around his knees almost tight enough to hide the trembling in them.

"He's passed out now, though?" Steve asks, wanting to reach out and touch. To just take Bucky's blunt-tipped fingers in his hands and smooth away all the tension. Press his lips right to the scrapes.

"Yeah, he's out. Ma and the kids'll be fine."

Bucky always makes sure they will be. Makes himself the first line of defense every time, and Steve loves him for it, but it makes his skin go tight with anger and worry too. He just wants to _fix it._

"God, I'm just so—" Bucky makes a growling sound of helpless energy and frustration, springing to his feet to start pacing. "I should go out, I think. I need to…"

He needs to get it out, Steve knows, but he thinks it would be about the worst idea for Bucky to just wander Brooklyn's midnight streets in the mood he's in. Who even knows what kind of trouble he could find. 

"Pick up a girl, maybe," Bucky goes on, "and just—"

"Buck, no," Steve cuts him off. "It's late and you shouldn't be—just stay here, alright? Let me—"

" _What,_ Stevie?" Bucky's voice is sharp in that way it only gets when he's trying to keep it from being soft. When he's raw and trying not to show it. "What are you gonna do?"

So that's how it starts, because Steve would do _anything,_ anything at all.

"Sit back down," he says. His nails are pressed so hard into his palms he'll have biting lines left behind, but Bucky doesn't know that. He hears Steve's steady voice and he sinks back to the floor with his knees bent, looking up at him with eyebrows hard and skeptical. With eyes soft underneath because he's tired and scared and just wants to feel better. Steve sits down with him, kneeling between Bucky's spread legs. 

"I don't wanna _talk_ ," Bucky says. "I need—"

"I know," Steve says. "And I need you to not go do somethin' stupid 'cause you're pissed off. _I_ can get you off if you need it. I got hands."

Bucky's eyebrows lose their firm lines of anger as they lift up, his lips falling open. Steve gets lightheaded staring back at him and waiting, before reminding himself to breathe in and out.

And this is _really_ where it starts, because Bucky doesn't scoff, or laugh at him, or push him out of the way to climb back out the window and get what he needs somewhere else. He sinks back against the wall, looks at him gratefully, and says, "Yeah, Stevie. Would ya?"

So Steve shuffles a little closer on his knees and thumbs open Bucky's slacks. He waits for Bucky to lift his hips so he can shimmy them down and pull them off, then reaches for him just like that, before either of them can change their minds. Runs his flattened palm over the soft bulge in Bucky's thin boxers and watches Bucky's face, because if he _does_ change his mind Steve will see it and he'll stop, of course he will.

But if he _doesn't…_ he doesn't. He exhales heavy and slow, like he's letting go of something, and he lets his head tip back against the wall so he's watching Steve through hooded eyes. He closes them before Steve's even finished making him hard with long strokes of the heel of his hand. 

When Steve parts the flap in Bucky's underwear to slip his cock free, there's a moment where Bucky goes tense and Steve's eyes fly to his face, waiting for anything that says this isn't okay. 

"Buck..." he says, his thumb just grazing velvet soft skin stretching thin with arousal. He gets his answer then, not with words and not in Bucky's face, but in the way his knees fall open wider and his cock twitches under Steve's touch. Bare and hard, the tip shiny and flushed with the foreskin retracted. He runs his thumb over it just to feel the slickness, and Bucky's breath stutters, his hips shifting just a little closer to Steve.

So they're not stopping then, and a part of Steve is in knots over it all because he's _thought_ about this. He's played it all out in his mind—how Bucky would feel in his hand, and the sounds he'd make, and the way he'd taste when they kissed—except there won't be any kissing. That isn't what this is, not for Bucky. 

Steve bites down on the inside of his cheek and pushes those thoughts away. Bucky needs this, he needs _Steve—_ right now at least—and so what if it isn't any of his silly, hopeful fantasies coming to life. Bucky's still hot in Steve's hand, throbbing with want against his palm, and when Steve slides his fingers down to the soft, dark curls at the base of Bucky's shaft, he really can't think about anything else anyway. 

He strokes him slow and careful, mesmerized by the pull of foreskin, the pre-cum beading up in Bucky's exposed slit. The way he fattens up so sweet and perfect from Steve's attention. 

"Don't gotta be… so soft with me," Bucky says, voice coming out hushed and strained. His eyes are open again but they're not so steely grey now, like when he first came in. They're darker, warmer, like humid August nights when Steve can't sleep and that's okay, because Bucky'll stay up with him. Telling sleepy stories in the glow of city lights and distant stars. " _Steve,_ can you—"

"Yeah, yeah," Steve says quickly, tightening his grip now that Bucky's fully hard. He jerks Bucky the way he does it to himself when he only has a few minutes and so many thoughts of pale eyes and loose, dark waves filling his head. It's rough and a little desperate, and it must be what Bucky wants because he squeezes his eyes closed again with a little groan, lets his legs spread so wide Steve has to look away. He can't let himself think about fitting his body in between them, pressing himself to Bucky's chest and feeling every little punched out breath right against his lips.

This isn't about Steve, or the way he feels for Bucky. This is only Bucky needing to let go, and Steve helping him do it. He keeps his eyes on Bucky's furrowed brow and jerks him harder. Short, tight strokes that have Bucky squirming, his bottom lip trembling—wet and red from his own teeth pinching it—and then with one last tug he's spilling heavy and warm over Steve's fingers, face turned so his low moan is muffled by his shoulder.

Steve doesn't want to let go of him, wants to stroke him until he's shivering, but he lets go as soon as Bucky's cock stops pulsing in his hand. Tries to school his face into something neutral before Bucky opens his eyes, so Bucky won't see the fire running under his skin. The awe lighting him up because he made Bucky _come._ He watched Bucky's muscles clench and his mouth fall open, and he saw the way his whole body loosened after, legs still spread wide with Steve kneeling between them. 

When Bucky does open his eyes they're soft and tired. "Can I sleep here?" he asks, like it's any other night and Steve doesn't have a handful of Bucky's come wrapped up in his fingers. 

"Yeah, sure," Steve says. "I'm gonna—" He tips his head towards his bedroom door, so Bucky knows he's going to go wash up. 

"'Kay," Bucky says, tucking himself back in his boxers. He leaves his pants on the floor and crawls into Steve's bed, wedging himself in with his back to the wall so there's still room for Steve. 

It only takes a few minutes in the bathroom for Steve to get himself off too, fucking into his own hand, still slick with Bucky's release. Even so, by the time he's cleaned himself up and gone back to his room, Bucky's already fast asleep.

Steve watches him for a while. Trails a fingertip between his eyebrows, smooth and relaxed now, and down the line of his nose. He touches the pink of his lips and the cleft of his chin, and then he curls his fingers into a fist to make himself stop. Bucky isn't asking to be touched now. He probably won't ask to be touched again. 

But Steve knows now, how he looks with his legs spread open and his eyes shut tight, and he's never going to forget it. 

*** * ***

They don't say anything about it in the morning. Bucky's a little quieter than usual, and Steve's a little softer, but by the time they see each other again the next day it's like it didn't happen. It stays that way for weeks, for months. For so long Steve tells himself he doesn't think about it anymore, even though he does. 

It stays that way until a sweltering afternoon the following June when Bucky gets laid off from one of his jobs, the one that earns him the most. He can't go home because his father's there, and he winds up outside Steve's window again with thundercloud eyes.

"We got a door," Steve says, before he knows what's wrong. "Ma's not even home, you coulda—"

"I got fired," Bucky says.

"Oh… Buck."

"Didn't even do nothin' wrong, I just—" Bucky slams the side of his fist into the iron headboard of Steve's bed. " _It's_ _nothing personal, Barnes, we just can't keep you,"_ he goes on in a deep voice that Steve knows is meant to be Bucky's supervisor. "Goddammit, I _needed_ that job."

"I know," Steve says. He doesn't try to tell him it'll be okay, not right now. Bucky works so hard, and so does his ma, but there's six of them in that little house and never quite enough to make ends meet. Not when George is out of work more often than he's in it. "Jesus, I'm sorry, Buck."

The storm in Bucky's eyes turns to something less like thunder and more like rain. "The fuck am I gonna do?"

Steve's not sure if Bucky's worried about getting a new job or telling his folks he lost this one, but he doesn't think any answer he gives is really going to help right now. Not when tension is rolling off of Bucky in waves, his jaw clenched so tight it's making Steve's teeth ache just to look at it. 

"Hey, come here," he says instead, taking Bucky's wrist and pulling him close enough to wrap his arms around his waist. Bucky folds his over Steve's shoulders automatically and sinks into him, forehead resting on the crown of Steve's head. "How can I help?"

He's not even thinking about it at first, about the way he helped before, but then Bucky breathes out warm and heavy in Steve's hair and suddenly it's _all_ he's thinking about—those little gasps Bucky had let out, and the way his skin had flushed pink while Steve brought him off. 

Bucky's arms get a little tighter around him now, like maybe he's remembering too. And he must be, because then he says, "Could you… Stevie, would you mind? Like before?"

It's been more than a year since then. Steve's hardly changed a bit of course, even though he's just about to turn eighteen. Probably will always look about the same, small and thin and wanting for something. 

But Bucky, he's grown at least a couple inches taller. His shoulders, chest, and thighs have broadened. He's wearing his hair longer, thick and curled from the summer heat, and Steve wants him more than ever.

"Yeah," he says. "Sure, Buck."

They stay where they are for a few more minutes, but Steve lets his hands move over Bucky's back now instead of just hugging him. Trails his fingers lightly up and down his spine, digs into his muscles to feel the tension there and try to work it away with his thumbs. When Bucky's leaning heavy on his shoulders Steve nudges him towards the bed, sweeping the cover out of the way. 

"Go on," he says, and when Bucky obediently sits down with his back against the pillows, Steve remembers how quickly Bucky dropped to the floor for him when Steve asked him to last time. "Take your pants off," he adds, keeping his voice even and firm, so neither of them have to start asking questions about what they're about to do. 

Bucky doesn't question him, just undoes his slacks and kicks them off before toeing his socks off too, then looking to Steve with raised eyebrows and one thumb hooked under the band of his underwear.

"Yeah, and those," Steve says, and Bucky does it, just like that. Lets Steve lean in after and unbutton his shirt, too, then shrugs it off so he's left in just a sleeveless undershirt, already damp with sweat down the center of his chest from his walk home in the sun. 

"Ain't you hot?" Bucky asks, looking over Steve in his too big t-shirt and the loose cotton shorts he wears when he's at home. He _is_ hot, but he didn't know if it was okay for him to undress too. This isn't for the two of them, this is for Bucky. 

"I…"

"Come on. Feels weird being naked when you're all dressed."

Steve doesn't need to be naked to get Bucky off, unless Bucky's wanting something different this time than last time. And if he is… 

Steve pulls his own shirt over his head and then looks down at Bucky again—at the dark hair trailing down from his navel, his cock lying soft against his thigh. He thinks about taking it in his mouth, taking it in his body, taking anything that Bucky wants to give him.

"Come on, Steve," Bucky says again, impatient now. "Please, I need—"

"I know," Steve says, slipping out of his shorts and leaving his underwear on. "I know, I've got you."

Bucky settles back against the pillows again, and Steve climbs over him, straddling him. He liked the way Bucky looked last time, knees raised and open, but he likes this too. Likes the way Bucky's legs are pinned together, the way he's held in place underneath Steve, and the way his balls rest heavy on his soft thighs. He starts there, cupping Bucky's sack and tugging on it lightly, and then a little harder when Bucky makes a grunting sound and his cock starts to fill up. 

He wants to keep going like this, just playing with Bucky's balls and seeing how hard he can get before Steve even touches him, but Bucky's wound so tight and Steve shouldn't draw this out. He should just wind him all the way up so he can snap and let everything go. 

"Hey," Bucky says, when Steve runs a fingertip up to Bucky's tip and down again. "Can you…"

Steve looks up, tearing his eyes away from the vein running along Bucky's cock that he wants to follow over and over, and finds Bucky watching him with need all over his face. "What, Buck?"

Bucky bites his lip, eyebrows creasing and cheeks flushing like he doesn't know how to say it, and Steve doesn't know how to read his mind. "I just—feels better when I can—can you just be closer?"

None of that was very clear, but Steve remembers the way Bucky melted into him when he hugged him, and he thinks he understands. He shifts off Bucky's lap and presses himself to his side instead, his left shoulder wedged in Bucky's armpit so his right hand's free to wrap around his cock—thick and fully erect now—and start to jerk him properly. "Is this—"

"Yeah," Bucky says, curling his arm around Steve and pulling him against himself. It's hot like this, sweaty and close, and Steve thinks he could get high on the smell of Bucky's skin. "Yeah, that's— _hah,"_ Bucky gasps when Steve squeezes tight around his exposed head and drags his hand down. 

"Reach in my nightstand," Steve says. "There's some Vaseline in there."

Bucky fumbles with the drawer with his left hand, rattling around and coming up with the little jar. "Use this on yourself a lot?" he asks, spinning the lid open one-handed for Steve with an ease that suggests he has a jar of his own that sees plenty of use. 

"You want my help or not?" Steve asks, dipping two fingers in and scooping up more than he needs. 

"M'not teasing you, you're just—you're good at this," Bucky says, hips jerking a little when Steve wraps his newly slicked hand around him and strokes him slowly.

He _is_ pretty good at it. He's good at slipping a finger or two inside himself, too. Crooking them just right, working his wrist and pumping them in and out. He could do it now, if Bucky wanted. Open himself up and climb back on top of Bucky, let him press inside of Steve and forget all about empty wallets and lost jobs. 

Or, if Bucky wanted something else, he could—

"Stevie," Bucky says, whining a little. Panting. His whole body feels so tight next to Steve's and Steve doesn't know if it's stress, or arousal, or a mix of both. "It's not—I need… closer? Please?"

Steve's already so close, his head resting on Bucky's shoulder now. He slides his slick fingers over Bucky's balls, presses them to the tender skin behind them and feels Bucky's sharp intake of breath.

" _Yeah,_ Steve. Give me—just gimme more, I want—"

Steve would give Bucky goddamn anything if he asked in that voice, so sweet and wanting. He hates anything that hurts Bucky—the worry and the fear and the empty beer bottles littering the Barnes' kitchen counter—but he loves this so much his blood is singing with it. He didn't even know Bucky could get this soft. Didn't know he'd ever have him in his bed like this, spreading his legs and gasping when Steve lets his finger settle right over his hole.

"More?" Steve asks, because he wants Bucky to say it. So he'll know for certain, and also just so he can hear it on Bucky's tongue. Hear him asking Steve to press inside him.

Bucky shifts his hips with a whine, trying to wiggle lower.

"You gotta tell me what you wan—"

"Just put it _in,_ put it in me, _please."_

They're going to need to talk about this later, Steve thinks, if they can get themselves to. Because it's one thing to jerk a friend off quick and hard while he keeps his hands to himself, and another thing entirely to slip your fingers inside him while he holds you in your bed. 

Steve had no idea Bucky liked it like this—always assumed it was just him who got off on something stuffing him full—but now here's Bucky, begging to be filled up. Maybe they don't have to talk about that, but Steve's sure never going to stop thinking about it.

He pushes his middle finger against the tight furl of Bucky's entrance and almost whines himself when it gives so quickly under his touch. Opens up and pulls at him as he presses inside to the first knuckle, and then to the second. 

"Better?" he asks, once he's deep as he can reach, and Bucky's hot and unbelievably tight around his finger. "This what you needed?"

Bucky's hand has dropped to Steve's waist and it tightens there, fingers digging into his skin while Bucky pushes into Steve's hand. That's more than enough answer for Steve. It's not long before he's worked a second finger in, and soon after that he's found Bucky's prostate and Bucky is keening, his cock twitching and dripping on his skin. 

"Stevie… Steve," he says, strained and so sweet Steve can't bear not being able to see his face anymore. He props himself up on his elbow, rolling half on top of Bucky so he can finger him and watch the way his mouth keeps falling open at the same time.

"Another?" he asks, pulling out to tug at Bucky's rim a little, then pressing three fingers in when Bucky nods quickly with his head tipped back, his face flushed and bright with sweat. Once Steve's worked them in comfortably he settles into the rhythm he likes best on himself—quick, rough thrusts broken up by long presses against his prostate that make his eyes roll back. 

Bucky's eyes are closed, but he's moaning and gasping in turns, digging his nails into Steve's hip. Finally gripping his cock and whining when he tries to find his own rhythm, fucking into his tight fist and pressing back against Steve's hand. When he lifts his hips Steve follows him, keeping his fingers inside him and rubbing hard while Bucky's hand moves at a desperate pace, rough and uneven. 

"Jesus, _fuck,"_ Bucky cries, back arching higher off the bed. "I'm—"

His voice rises into a broken little sound that makes Steve ache and throb where he's pressed to Bucky's hip, and he chases it, fucks Bucky with sharp, steady thrusts of his fingers so he can keep hearing it the whole time Bucky's shuddering and spilling over himself.

When Bucky's hips finally sink back to the bed, both of them are panting and Steve doesn't know what the hell happens now. This was for Bucky, it was just for Bucky, but Steve is barely holding himself back from rutting against Bucky's side. From leaning over him and licking his skin clean.

The hand Bucky still has around Steve's waist shifts lower, grabbing a handful of his boxers and tugging. "C'mere," he says, voice gone deep and soft, like it's melted right down with the rest of him. "Get over me an' I can help you."

"You don't gotta, Buck," Steve says, but Bucky grabs Steve's arm with his other hand, sticky and hot still, and pulls him up so he's straddling Bucky's legs again. Steve's cock is straining in his boxers, the white cotton gone sheer in an obscenely large spot from how much he was leaking while fingering Bucky. "M'sorry," he says, unable to meet Bucky's eyes. "Didn't mean to—"

"Don't be stupid," Bucky says, wrapping a hand around Steve through his boxers. "You want them off?"

Steve shakes his head. He's already so close, and having a layer between their skin is probably the only thing that will keep Steve from coming the second Bucky starts moving his hand. 

He chances a quick glance up when Bucky's fingers tighten around his cock, and finds Bucky watching him, head back against the pillows and eyelids heavy. His hair is a riot of dark curls, his cheeks so red it almost looks like he's been slapped. Steve wants to kiss him even more than he wants to come, but then Bucky starts to stroke him—firm and slow and tight—and he stops thinking about what he wants and just aches with it. Squeezes his eyes shut as his balls draw up tight and his fingers curl in the sheets on either side of Bucky's chest. 

A soft touch on the back of his neck startles him and his eyes fly back open. Bucky's watching him still, right hand jerking Steve so terribly, perfectly slow, and left hand cupping the back of Steve's neck, drawing him closer. 

"What—what are you—"

"I wanna make you feel good, Stevie," Bucky says, his eyes soft and earnest. "Wanna thank you."

"You don't—" Steve begins, trying to say Bucky doesn't owe him anything. That letting Steve touch him at all is everything Steve wants. But Bucky's hand is firm and Steve is hot wax underneath it. He's pulled right down until full, soft lips are pressing to his. 

He wants to memorize this, every detail of how it feels—how Bucky tastes like the salt of sweat and something sweet underneath—but it's like his mind is filling with static, louder and louder with every stroke of Bucky's hand. Then Bucky's tongue slides between Steve's lips, his thumb slips through the flap in Steve's boxers to brush over his slit, and Steve comes so suddenly he doesn't even make a sound. Just a startled breath that Bucky swallows while he kisses him all the way through, till the last little tremor has moved through him and he drops onto Bucky's chest. 

"That was nice," Bucky says, fingers still hot on the back of Steve's neck, reaching up to brush away the sweaty hair sticking to his nape. 

It _was_ nice, and it was so much more than nice, and Steve doesn't know what the fuck any of this means. There was so much less to think about last time, when Bucky didn't touch him. Didn't stay awake to say anything about it after. 

"Yeah," Steve says, acutely aware of the way his stomach is pressed to Bucky's cooled come, and the way his own has soaked his boxers. The way it must be sticky on Bucky's hand now. "I, uh… I should clean up."

The hand on the back of Steve's neck slides further up into his hair, holding him in place. "Can you—can we just stay like this? For a bit?"

It's so incredibly hot, with the temperature at its peak and the press of sweaty skin, but Steve nods against Bucky's chest and shifts just enough to be able to wrap an arm around him too. As if he would ever not give Bucky what he needs. 

"It'll be okay, Buck," he says, now that Bucky is soft and relaxed, and might actually believe him. "I can help you look. You'll find something else."

"I know," Bucky says. "I just wish…" 

Steve can fill in the rest easily enough on his own when Bucky doesn't go on, because he wishes the same things. That George Barnes was healthier and happier, and able to hold down a steady job so Bucky's load wasn't quite so heavy. That his little sisters weren't so thin and his mother wasn't so tired. 

"They're depending on me," Bucky says finally, "and I—"

"It wasn't your fault."

"But I still—"

"Hey," Steve says sitting up so he can look Bucky in the eye. "Don't you fucking blame yourself when you ain't done nothing wrong. You're doing your best, you always are."

"Jesus, Rogers," Bucky says, lips twitching up in a small smile for the first time since he came through Steve's window. "You gonna fight me?"

"If you're talking shit about my best friend? Yeah, I am."

Bucky still looks tired and there's a shadow of worry left in his eyes, but he gives Steve a real smile. "How come _you_ get to talk shit about me then?"

"Rules are rules, Buck. I don't make 'em, I just follow 'em."

That draws a snort from Bucky and he sits up too, dragging a hand through his tangled curls. "You wouldn't know how to follow a rule if your life depended on it."

Maybe. But if the rules say that Steve shouldn't like getting Bucky off so much that it's all he's thought about for months on end, why the hell would he _want_ to follow them?

"You really want that to change?" he asks, expecting another smile, or an eye-roll, but not for Bucky's lips to pull into a serious line.

"Stevie... you need to be careful. We need to be. This shouldn't—you know this isn't okay, outside'a here."

 _This,_ of course, is Bucky's bare thighs streaked with Vaseline. It's the taste of Bucky's mouth still sweet on Steve's tongue. 

Steve thinks about saying something dismissive and casual. Something about helping a friend out and how it's fine, it's nothing, they don't even have to talk about it anymore. 

What he says is, "I haven't done this with anyone else," and it brings a smile back to Bucky's face, soft and pleased. 

"Just with me, huh?" he says, biting his lip when Steve nods. "Wouldn't mind doing it again then, maybe? Sometime?"

Steve's thoughts are flying, trying to find the right answer to this, trying to hear the parts that Bucky's leaving out. Is it only okay if Bucky is upset and they have an excuse? Is it okay any time Steve just wants to get his hands on Bucky's skin? If he asks too many questions will this fall apart and leave him with none of it being okay?

"No," he says simply, because that's the most important part. "I wouldn't mind."

He wants Bucky to know that it's more than that, that what he means is there's _nothing_ he wants more, but it seems like too much to say out loud right now, so he just hands Bucky his discarded boxers and leaves it at that.

Once they've both cleaned up and gotten shorts and pants back on, they climb out to the fire escape together with bare chests and wet hair, hoping the evening air will give them a hint of a chill.

All they get is more sweat collecting under their arms and at the backs of their knees, but it's nice to be out here all the same. Kids are playing in the street below them, cracking worn baseballs with sticks, and the pieces of sky between the buildings surrounding them are growing soft with streaks of orange and pink. 

Bucky had used a lot of words that didn't mean very much, before—he said _maybe,_ and _sometime_ —but his lips are still a little kiss-swollen, his cheeks still flushed as rosy as the sunset, and Steve thinks that Bucky wasn't saying exactly what he meant any more than he was. 

So maybe this is where it really starts, now that it's sitting here between them, acknowledged and encouraged. A quiet, heated little possibility. 

There will be an end too, of course. Steve knows that. But at least, for now—with bare feet dangling from the fire escape and knees touching—they're still at the beginning. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Em and Val for looking over this for me, and thank you for reading! You can find my other stucky fics [here](https://archiveofourown.org/worksutf8=%E2%9C%93&commit=Sort+and+Filter&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=revised_at&include_work_search%5Brelationship_ids%5D%5B%5D=110293&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bexcluded_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bcrossover%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_from%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_to%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_from%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_to%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&user_id=Ellessey), and can find me continually singing their praises (and Sebastian Stan's) on twitter at [elliebbarnes](https://twitter.com/elliebbarnes).


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "How long are you gonna tease?" Bucky asks, when Steve's kissing the tip with his lips parted, but still isn't taking it into his mouth. 
> 
> "Supposed to be showing you I'm okay, right? When do I ever make anything easy for you?"
> 
> Bucky's cheeks are flaming when Steve looks up at him. "Sometimes you do," he says. "When we're… when we're doing this, you do."

The bright heat of June carries into July, and Bucky's arms and face turn golden with the sun. The freckles over his nose darken. Steve spends more minutes than he can count each day thinking about touching them all with the tip of his finger.

Bucky hasn't asked for anything since that night last month, so Steve hasn't offered anything, apart from a warm congratulations when Bucky picks up a new job. And some even warmer teasing when he sees Bucky in his crisp collared shirt and tie on his first day, hair slicked back neatly with copious amounts of Brylcreem. 

"An office man now, huh?" Steve says. "How will I recognize you without grease all over your hands?"

"Well it's all in my hair now, ain't it? Not so different."

It is, actually, quite different. A whole new kind of handsome that Steve can't take his eyes off. But Bucky is working long hours, and he's happy enough, and he isn't asking for Steve's hands on him.

All Steve can think about, every time he watches Bucky carefully buttoning the cuffs of his shirt, is having Bucky's hands on him again. 

He's thinking about it now while they walk home from sharing paper wrapped sandwiches and ice waters on an overcast Friday. The sun hasn't quite set, but the sky's heavy and grey with rain that hasn't yet fallen. It's the color of Bucky's eyes when he's wound up and needy. It feels like energy needing to be spent. Like the desire for release. 

It's hot in Steve's veins and thick in his head, clouding his thoughts and his focus, and he doesn't even register that he's stepped into the street when he shouldn't have until there's a cacophony of sound snapping everything into clarity. Screeching tires, a blaring horn, Bucky shouting and yanking Steve backwards so sharply his shoulder stings with it.

"Jesus _Christ,"_ Bucky says, while the truck Steve almost walked into, parked in the middle of the street now after swerving to miss him, slams the horn again and then peels away.

Steve stumbles further back onto the sidewalk, his arm still clasped tight in Bucky's hand. "I didn't—I didn't see it," he tries to explain. "I don't—"

"You _idiot!_ You stupid fucking idiot," Bucky says, pulling Steve against his chest and holding him so tight Steve can feel the rapid pouding of Bucky's heart. "The hell is _wrong_ with you?"

What can Steve say? He'd forgotten all about the existence of vehicles, and traffic rules, and the fragility of his own body. He was only thinking about how strong he felt with Bucky soft and trembling around his fingers.

"I'm sorry," he says, words muffled by Bucky's sweat-damp shirt. "I didn't—"

He's pushed back suddenly, held at arm's length by an iron grip while Bucky's eyes scan over him from head to toe. "It didn't hit you at all? You're okay?"

"I'm fine, Buck, I'm totally fine."

"You could have _died,_ you little piece of shit. I'm so fucking—"

"Bucky," Steve says, because they're not alone, and they definitely have eyes on them with the spectacle they've been making. "Let's go, okay? You can—you can make sure I'm okay at home."

Bucky's eyes are dark and the pressure of his hands has got to be bruising Steve's arms. "You scared the shit out of me," he says, quieter now. Somehow it ends up feeling louder, laced through with fear and relief. With something sharp and bright as the flickers of lightning behind the clouds. 

"I know, I know. Let's go home. I need to go home."

He didn't realize it until he said it, but his hands are shaking—all of him is shaking a little. He wasn't afraid in the moment, but it's settling into him now. The awful squeal of rubber and the bite of panic in Bucky's voice echoing in his head. 

Bucky nods shortly, keeping an arm over Steve's shoulder as they cross the street, and all the way to Steve's building. Sarah's still at work, so when they get upstairs he doesn't waste any time scolding Steve all over again with every foul word he can think of. Hands moving gently over Steve's face and down his arms as if he's going to find hidden injuries there, when the only part of Steve that actually hurts is his shoulder from Bucky jerking him backwards. 

He's certainly not going to tell Bucky that, and he's not going to stop him either, because every brush of calloused fingers and warm palms is steadying Steve. Taking away the trembling of an unexpected brush with disaster, and replacing it with a low buzz in his veins that's just made of want. 

Bucky, for his part, doesn't look any more relaxed than he had out on the street, but Steve knows how to fix that.

"Buck, hey, I'm really alright," he says. "I promise."

"You're _so stupid._ You gotta pay attention, Stevie, Jesus."

"I know, I was just—" A crack of thunder cuts him off, and he uses the lingering rumble of it as an excuse to keep his reasons to himself. 

"Just giving me a heart attack? Just for fun?"

"Didn't mean to," Steve says. "Sit down, okay? Let me make it up to you."

Bucky scowls. "You don't gotta make anything up to me. Just use your goddamn brain next time and don't walk right in front of a fucking _truck."_

"Sit down," Steve says again, and this time Bucky does it, dropping onto the Rogers' lumpy, mustard yellow sofa. Steve sinks right down to the floor in front of him, in the space between Bucky's knees. Bucky hasn't asked yet, but maybe he will if Steve makes it very clear what the answer will be.

"Stevie…"

"I'm okay. Wanna see how okay I am?" He rests his hands lightly on Bucky's thighs, watching his eyes widen in response.

"I... you don't have to."

"What if I want to?" Steve asks, because of course he fucking wants to, and if almost being hit by a car is good for anything, maybe it's knocking a little honesty out into the air. 

Bucky swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing. Steve watches with his heart in his own throat and reminds himself to breathe. 

"Show me, then," Bucky says. "Show me you're okay."

There are so many ways Steve could do that, so many ways he hopes Bucky will let him, but he starts with unbuckling Bucky's belt and opening his pants. They'd met up straight from work, from Bucky's office job, so he's wearing his nice slacks and Steve doesn't want them off yet. He tugs them down along with Bucky's boxers, just low enough to free Bucky's cock. The dark fabric is so stark next to the pale skin of Bucky's thighs. Steve wants to _live_ between these thighs. 

He settles his hand there, over Bucky's hardening cock. Palming it slowly, squeezing it, rubbing his thumb along it as it lengthens.

"Christ," he says, when it's full and stiff in his hand. He's seen it before of course, touched it when it was hard like this and wrung it dry, but this is the first time he's about to try to fit his mouth around it. This is the first time he's realizing that might not actually be possible.

He spends a few moments thinking it through, and then just as he reaches for it, Bucky brings his own hand down and wraps it around his shaft. 

"Just start with the head," he says, holding it there like an offering. Like one of the thousands of things they've shared over the past fifteen years, except not like any of those things at all. 

Even with Bucky's hand covering it, there's still plenty left for Steve to work with, but he does start with just the tip. Flicks his tongue over the slit, light and quick. Swirls his tongue around the head in slow, wet circles that draw a low exhalation from Bucky. 

"How long are you gonna tease?" he asks, when Steve's kissing the tip with his lips parted, but still isn't taking it into his mouth. 

"Supposed to be showing you I'm okay, right? When do I ever make anything easy for you?"

Bucky's cheeks are flaming when Steve looks up at him. "Sometimes you do," he says. "When we're… when we're doing this, you do."

That's true, now that Steve thinks about it. So far he's given Bucky exactly what he needed, right when he needed it. That's been the whole point of it all.

"You want me to make it easy?" he asks, keeping his lips so close to Bucky that they brush the heated skin of his cock as he speaks.

Bucky's hair is still neatly styled, and the way it contrasts with the color in his face and the desperation in his eyes makes something in Steve's stomach swoop. His face is so goddamn sweet, and when he nods his head, Steve is helpless. 

"Okay," he says, then he closes his mouth around the head of Bucky's cock, presses his tongue hard against the underside, and sucks. 

It feels amazing. The silky skin against the insides of his cheeks, the fullness of it, the weight of it on his tongue. Steve closes his eyes and loses himself in it, suckling the tip like he could drink Bucky right down so he's safe inside of Steve. 

Bucky's taking short, shallow breaths, he's holding Steve's head with gentle fingers, dripping salt on the back of Steve's tongue. He's perfect, and he's letting Steve taste him. Letting him hold him between his teeth and trusting Steve to take care of him, so Steve does his fucking best. 

He works his way down the length of Bucky while the thunder rolls on outside the windows, slow and steady until his lips are brushing Bucky's fingers. He chokes a little when Bucky's cock reaches his throat, thick and heavy and so solid. He can't keep it there for long, but he can let it slide back and forth over his tongue, bob his head and swallow when it's as deep as he can get it. Swallow again when just the head is tight in his mouth. 

Bucky's breath catches no matter what he does. His fingers curl in Steve's hair and his thighs shake on either side of him from trying to keep still. "Stevie, Stevie shit, please."

Steve pulls off, letting his bottom teeth graze Bucky's skin and licking away the precum that beads up in response. 

"Don't believe me yet?" he asks. "Think you need a little more?"

"Think you wouldn't know what to do with yourself if you didn't have something to prove," Bucky says. His voice is almost unfamiliar with how breathy it is, but his eyes are all Bucky. Teasing, and seeing right down to the core of Steve. "What else you got, Rogers?"

Steve's got a lot of plans that he can't make good on without some slick. He smirks at Bucky instead of answering and dips his head to mouth at his balls. Fitting one into his mouth to suck it a little, then licking over them both, licking behind them. 

"Wait here," he says, leaving Bucky panting and squirming, forcing himself not to run when he gets up to retrieve the Vaseline from his room. Bucky hasn't moved an inch when he comes back, but his eyes are following Steve, a little glassy and more than a little needy. 

"Are you gonna—" he starts, then cuts himself off when Steve tugs on Bucky's pants, helping to shimmy them all the way off. His hands come up to Steve's belt after, stopping just short of slipping the leather free. "Steve, will you fuck me this time?"

It takes a monumental force of will for Steve to not burst right into flames, but he manages to pull himself together enough to say, "I fucked you last time, didn't I? Seem to remember you coming on my fingers, all sweet and easy. You remember that?"

"Holy Christ, Steve, yeah I—I remember, but I want…"

Steve gets the lid off the Vaseline and slicks his fingers up.

"I want you to...to…"

Bucky's hole is so tight, but Steve slips his fingertip in. Watches it get swallowed up between the soft curves of Bucky's ass. 

"I can give you whatever you want, Buck. I'm just fine, I'm here. I'll give you anything."

Bucky moans, with Steve's finger buried in him now. "I want you to fuck me. I want—Stevie, please, I want your cock."

There's a damn good chance Steve will come in his pants before he ever gets his cock wet, if Bucky keeps saying things like that. He still can't get over it, the way the bold and beautiful Bucky Barnes, Bucky of the cocky smile and confident swagger, melts right down into something sweet as a sugar glaze. So quick to say please. So eager to open his legs so Steve can fit between them. 

Steve just nods, because he doesn't trust himself to say anything right now without his voice cracking. He works his finger in and out of Bucky before adding a second, and Bucky reaches for Steve's belt again before he can add a third.

"M'ready," he says. "Just open me with… just _fuck_ me."

"Do you got a—"

"Yeah, yeah in my wallet," Bucky says, unzipping Steve's pants and tugging them down along with his boxers. Steve yanks his own shirt off and then goes looking for a rubber in the back pockets of the pants on the floor, while Bucky finishes undressing. 

"Right here?" Steve asks, not quite sure how they'll have room. Steve fits on the couch just fine, but Bucky's all long legs and broad shoulders, and Steve doesn't want to be rushed by discomfort. "Or should we…"

Bucky looks around at the tiny couch underneath him, and the tiny living room around them, then gets to his feet. Tall and beautiful and stripped bare. 

He takes Steve's hand, like he used to when they were crossing the street together at five and six, or when he'd had a nightmare at eight or so, and somehow Steve's little hand in his made him feel better. He leads him into Steve's room and pulls him into bed, and Steve lets himself fall right on top of him. Lets their lips come together hard, and slips his fingers back inside Bucky to see how tight and wet he is, how ready he is for Steve to give him more. 

Bucky makes the softest little sounds under him, sweet against his lips. He presses his ass into Steve's hand and his fingers into Steve's hair.

"C'mon," he says. "You said you'd fuck me. Said you'd show me."

Steve's not even sure anymore what he's supposed to be showing Bucky, what he's supposed to be proving. That he's alive? That he's small and asthmatic and still more than capable of making Bucky shake? 

He'd give every last drop of blood in his body for Bucky, if he asked for it, but he thinks Bucky just wants to know he's here. They're both here, and they're okay. Even when things are hard at work, or at home, or anywhere else. 

And while they're by themselves here, this—whatever this is—is okay, too. 

Steve kisses Bucky in answer. The condom is hard to get into place when he has to stop to kiss him again and again after that, but he manages to roll it on and slick himself up.

"You're sure?" he asks once he's kneeling between Bucky's spread legs, the tip of his cock just brushing the pink, shiny rim of Bucky's hole. 

Bucky's bottom lip is in his mouth, and when he lets it go it's so red and wet it almost seems too intimate for Steve to be seeing. But if Bucky says yes, Steve's about to fit their bodies together in the most intimate way possible.

"Yeah, Stevie." Bucky's voice is barely above a whisper, his eyes steady on Steve's. "Want you in me."

Steve could make him wait. He could tease Bucky, finger him for an hour, eat him open until he's dripping with Steve's spit. But Bucky's lying in Steve's bed—with all his summer tan lines exposed and his hair finally starting to fall out of place—and he _wants_ Steve, so there's no other option but for Steve to give himself to him. 

Slow, slow at first, because two of Steve's slim fingers could only prep Bucky so much, but Bucky breathes deep and even, with his eyes on Steve. Relaxing for him, letting Steve press in and in. He's fire and breathtaking pressure inside. He's the safest, most perfect place that Steve has ever been, clutching Steve's cock so tight when he finally bottoms out. Steve can barely see straight, but he leans over Bucky, stroking his face with one hand. 

"Okay, Buck? Feel good?"

Bucky lifts his legs, crossing his ankles behind Steve's back, and the shift of it settles Steve in just that much deeper, drawing a moan up from his chest. 

"It's good, it's… God, it feels good, Stevie. Just like this."

Steve thinks so too, even though part of him is aching to move, to draw out of Bucky and slam back in. 

Like this, just now, it's like they're sealed together. Like Bucky will always be within Steve's reach. They'll never have to grow older, never have to leave this hushed space with the rain tap-tapping at the windows, and be what's expected of them instead of what they are. 

Steve dips his head and presses his lips to Bucky's chest, keeping still inside him while he kisses over the soft swell of Bucky's pecs, the line of his throat, and the dimple in his chin. He runs his tongue over Bucky's lips and presses it between them, opening Bucky's mouth so when Steve starts to move he can hear every hitched breath. Each little cry when he finally starts pulling out enough to thrust in again, feeling Bucky split open to make room for him every time.

Bucky swears like a sailor all the day long, but now there's just small, needy noises on his tongue that Steve licks away. There's the wet sound of Steve moving in him, the soft slap of skin against skin. The deep groan of thunder, like the sky is giving voice to the knot of heat wound up so tight and low in Steve's gut, urging him to go a little harder. To see if he can make Bucky take him just a little deeper. 

He can. Bucky squeezes his eyes closed and arches his back when Steve drives into him more forcefully. His mouth stays open, a soft, high moan rising up for every time Steve fucks him— _ah, ah, ah—_ a little more broken the longer they go. His hands are in his own hair, pulling at it with his head tipped back so Steve has to chase him down and nip his chin. Suck Bucky's lip into his mouth and pinch it between his teeth, while he presses in deep as he can and grinds his hips.

"Stevie," Bucky cries, legs tightening around Steve's back. "Stevie, I'm s-so—I'm… Jesus, please, please."

Bucky's cock is swollen and flushed red against his stomach, precum wet all over his skin, and Steve knows what he wants. But…

"You wanted my cock," Steve says. 

Bucky blinks heavy eyelids, his wet lips trembling. "I—I know, but—"

"You've got it, it's all yours. You can come on it now, can't you?"

Bucky whines in his throat, his cock pulsing and leaking a little more. His eyes are pleading, but he doesn't make a move to touch himself. "I—I don't know."

"You can," Steve says. "Told you I'd take care of you, Buck. M'gonna give you everything and you're gonna come for me, just like this."

The rain has picked up so much that Steve can barely hear Bucky panting now, but he can feel him clench around his cock and watch him grip the bars of the iron headboard, bracing himself. 

"You good, baby?" Steve asks, because Bucky's nothing but big, wet, blue eyes and soft pouting lips, and it just slips right off Steve's tongue. 

It makes Bucky clench again, makes the red in his cheeks deepen as he nods his head. "Please," he says, small and cracked open. 

Steve doesn't know what kind of magic works over Bucky when he's got something in his ass to make him this achingly sweet, but he's half drunk with it. Swallowing down Bucky's first sharp cry when Steve fills him quick and hard, and every shuddering gasp that comes after it. It's making his head spin and his vision narrow, so he's seeing only Bucky's white knuckles around the headboard, his red lips, the pink buds of his nipples. 

Steve pinches one between his fingers, rolls it and flicks it and pinches again when he sees Bucky's eyes rolling back. On his next thrust he scrapes his nail over it and Bucky sobs, his whole body jerking and then going rigid as he comes—squeezing so tight around Steve it takes the breath right out of his lungs, and spilling across his own chest in long, heavy pulses.

"Bucky," Steve breathes. "Jesus, Bucky, look at you. You're so good, you're so good."

Bucky's grip on the bars behind him finally goes slack, but he keeps his legs wrapped around Steve, keeps him pressed inside himself. "Please," he says once more, so Steve leans over him close as he can, bracing himself on his forearms. He kisses Bucky's nipple, the one that's red from Steve's fingers, and fucks him with short, sharp thrusts while Bucky's still twitching around his cock. 

When Steve's awareness dims to just the thunder of rain against glass and his pulse in his ears, he sucks the swollen bud into his mouth and comes, with Bucky shaking under him. 

There's a long moment, or several, where Steve almost forgets where he is. He's just heat and breathlessness and bone-deep pride that he can't place. Then finally he comes back to himself, lifts himself off of Bucky so he can look down at him and see him spread out like melted butter across Steve's sheets. Sleepy eyes and boneless limbs. Fucked-out bliss painted all over him.

Steve gets rid of the condom and drops down next to him, winding his fingers through Bucky's so they can catch their breath together while the rain falls and falls like a shield around them, keeping them wrapped up and safe.

"Thanks, Steve," Bucky says after a while, turning so his chin bumps the top of Steve's head.

"You don't have to keep thanking me for this stuff, I'm not… I'm not doing you a favor."

Bucky's quiet for a minute, his thumb stroking over Steve's hand. The rain has softened by the time he speaks again, so his low voice is easy to make out. "What _are_ you doing then?"

Steve closes his eyes. He's so heavy with sex and the edges of sleep, he just wants to press his face into Bucky's skin and stay there all night. Stay there always. But Bucky's right to be asking him this. He should have asked it the very first time. 

When Steve turns onto his side Bucky's watching him, loose curls falling over his forehead. There's something in his eyes that makes Steve want to cry. Like he already knows, just like Steve does, that it doesn't really matter what Steve says. 

"I know that we can't," Steve begins, because that's the truth of it, as much as he hates it. That's the end that will find them sooner or later. He won't put Bucky in danger, won't sign him up for a life of secrets and lies when he can have all the things he's supposed to. A wife, and a family that Steve can't give him.

"But I want it," he adds, because that's the truth of it too, and Bucky ought to know. 

Bucky's jaw tightens, his fingers twitching in Steve's hand. "Don't say that."

"Okay," Steve says, his voice small.

"It can't be like that, Stevie."

"Okay," Steve says again. He thinks he might actually cry, but not yet, not in front of Bucky. The sky can keep doing it for him, for now. 

"We shouldn't do this anymore."

Steve nods. He would be crying already, except he knows Bucky right down to his soul, and he knows why he's saying these things. He knows what it meant for Bucky to take Steve inside himself, and to come with tears in his eyes and Steve's name on his lips. 

And he knows that Bucky's right. 

He closes his eyes when Bucky kisses the side of his head, squeezes back when Bucky holds his hand so tightly that it hurts, and they stay there, just like that, while the night cools around them. 

The end came so much faster than Steve thought it would. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, a big thank you for your comments on the first chapter! I appreciate hearing from you all so much!
> 
> Second, an apology for the sad feels I left you with here...if it helps, I'm going to aim to get the next chapter up midweek ♥️


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Just this? Just for your birthday."
> 
> Steve's torn between saying no, and saying he wants so much more than just this. That as long as they have the thin excuse of beer and birthdays, they should take everything they want.
> 
> "Please, Stevie," Bucky whispers. "It'll only be tonight… just kiss me a little while."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up that there is referenced minor character death at the start of this chapter. After that it's just more sex and feelings ❤

When Bucky leaves, with his shirt buttons misaligned and his hair half-heartedly schooled back into place, Steve manages to smile at him like letting go of this isn't breaking something in him. He does the same when he sees him the next day, and the day after that, but 1936, it seems, is a year of endings.

Within a month, Sarah Rogers goes from coughing and tired, to frail and unable to get out of bed. Within days she goes from barely there to not there at all. To just an emptiness in Steve's chest that aches and aches. 

There are weeks on end where he's not sure if he smiles at all, falsely or otherwise, but Bucky is there with him all the same, never minding Steve's sour face or his sour mood. He helps with funeral arrangements, brings over dinners that Winnifred made, sits at Steve's side through long, cold evenings on the edge of winter.

Steve doesn't ask anything more of Bucky of course, nothing like what he'd given Bucky before, but he takes what Bucky gives him gratefully. His solid presence. His easy silence. 

And then they find themselves at the start of a new year, but this one brings endings with it too. George Barnes is laid to rest in the same cemetery as Sarah, and it's a different kind of loss, but it still sits in Bucky's eyes like a shadow. It's wound around his bones so tight that Steve can feel it in every joint when he holds Bucky's hand long after everyone else has gone home. When it's just the two of them and their grief.

He kisses Bucky then. Just a soft, brief brush of lips on a moonless night. Bucky softens, curling his fingers in Steve's jacket and leaning in for another, then stops himself and just hugs Steve instead. Admitting in a whisper that he's so goddamn relieved his father's gone he almost hates himself for it. That a part of him is sad, too, and he doesn't even know why.

"Oh, Buck," Steve says. "You're allowed to be relieved. You're allowed to be anything."

"I _hated_ him," Bucky says, and Steve holds him tighter.

"That's okay. You're okay, Buck, I love you."

It's the first time he's said that out loud, but it's not romantic, not right now. He's loved Bucky since long before he knew anything about romance. 

Bucky cries into Steve's hair, and Steve says it again and again, because this is so much more than a tumble in bed could solve. This is Bucky's heart, and Steve loves it with everything in him.

They share Steve's bed that night and they don't kiss, but the way they hold each other feels like it means just as much. 

Steve wonders, with Bucky's arms around him and his own fingers carding carefully through Bucky's hair, if they really ended anything at all. 

* * * 

He tries not to think about it too much. The quiet touch of lips in the cemetery. The first hungry kisses that sticky afternoon in June. The give of Bucky's body around him on a stormy summer night. 

There's hardly time for those kinds of thoughts these days anyway. Steve's working one steady job and a handful of odd ones, trying to keep the rent paid and his prescriptions filled. Bucky doesn't do anything _but_ work, except when he finds a moment to slip over to Steve's and try to convince him to let the apartment go. To make a space for himself in the Barnes' place. 

Most of the reason behind Steve's refusal is pride, but there's also his fear of being that close to Bucky. Sleeping in the same room as him (that's not even really a room, just a curtained off alcove) and not having the strength to stay away. Not even having the will.

Bucky hasn't been out on a date in months, and maybe that's because he's busy with work and his family, but he always manages to see Steve. 

That doesn't have to mean anything. Steve hopes that it doesn't, much as he wishes he could hope it did. 

He wishes he had any other reason to use as an excuse when they're on the cusp of July again, with all its humidity and pink-sky nights, and Bucky comes to him with a proposition. 

Winnifred's decided to move in with a widowed friend and her teenaged daughter. It will be a good arrangement for her and the girls, and one that won't carry as much need for Bucky's support. There won't be room for Bucky at all, actually, but at twenty now he's more than ready to move out.

"There ain't no sense in me bein' in a place by myself, and you still paying for a two bedroom apartment you don't need," he says, poking Steve with his bare foot when Steve rolls his eyes. They're sitting on Steve's bedroom floor with the window pushed open and the sounds of the city rising through it. "It oughta be condemned, anyway," Bucky says 

"The hell can we afford that would be much better?" 

"Between the two of us? A one bedroom without roaches, at least."

A one bedroom. Of course it makes sense, but God, does Bucky have any idea how often Steve dreams about thick curls held tight in his fingers, and Bucky's body flushed and trembling under his own?

He doesn't, and he shouldn't. _We shouldn't do this anymore._

"I don't know, Buck."

"Well I do," Bucky says, "so I guess that's that."

Steve should put up more of a fight, but he's lonely in this place, with just memories and ghosts and boxes of Sarah's things. He's hungry for Bucky's infectious laugh and his warm smiles. For glimpses of bare skin and hair still wet from a bath, even if he can't say it and can't do anything about it.

By Steve's nineteenth birthday they've moved into a studio apartment with one Murphy bed.

"People will talk," Steve said when they went to see it, but Bucky had shaken his head. 

"People know life's expensive. We can keep one of our old mattresses and just lean it up against the wall during the day. Look how clean it is, Stevie, and look at all the light!"

It's worn and small, but it _is_ clean, and Steve loves the light. 

He loves the squares of night sky winking at them now while Bucky fusses with his hair in the mirror of their own little bathroom before they go to see the fireworks. 

They watch them from the roof of their building with some of the other tenants, cheap beer in hand. Bucky sings _Happy Birthday_ too soft for their neighbors to hear, just a low hum under the cracks and booms of color lighting up the dark.

Both of them are close to drunk, or maybe a little past it, by the time they're back down in their room, and futzing with the Murphy bed feels like too much work.

"Let's just share," Bucky says, knocking the twin sized mattress away from the wall so it falls flat on the floor. 

Their plan is to take turns—one of them on the larger Murphy bed for a week, while the other takes the extra mattress, and then they'll switch. It's still their first week, Steve's week for the Murphy bed, but his limbs feel heavy and the mattress is right there, with just enough space beside Bucky for Steve to fit into. 

Face to face like this, Steve can't help staring a little. Bucky's lips are pink, his eyes glassy, and it's all so familiar even though it's been almost an entire year since Steve was inside him. 

"Stevie," Bucky says, and Steve works very hard to get his thoughts out from between Bucky's legs. "You have a good birthday?"

Steve nods. It makes him a little dizzy.

"M'sorry your ma couldn't be here today. Shoulda used her recipe and baked you a cake."

"It's alright, Buck. I'm… I'm…"

Bucky's eyes are deep grey in the dark. Steve watches them close, watches Bucky lean across the bit of distance between them, and then he shuts his eyes too and lets Bucky kiss him.

It's warm and slow, sending a low buzz through Steve's veins like another drink. 

"Sorry," Bucky mumbles right against his lips. "Sorry, I'm… drunk."

"Me too," Steve says, and he wishes he weren't, because he's afraid this will just be a dream to him tomorrow. "We should... s'not a good idea." 

"I know, just…" Bucky runs his thumb across Steve's cheekbone, still with his eyes closed. Just feeling Steve and then brushing another kiss over his lips. "Just this? Just for your birthday."

Steve's torn between saying no, and saying he wants so much more than just this. That as long as they have the thin excuse of beer and birthdays, they should take everything they want.

"Please, Stevie," Bucky whispers. "It'll only be tonight… just kiss me a little while."

In the end Steve doesn't say anything, just threads his fingers through Bucky's hair and lets their lips fit together again, like it's right where they belong. He tastes him slowly, breathes him in. He melts against the hand that slips under his shirt and presses warm against the bend of his spine. 

They kiss until even the gentle movements of their mouths take more energy than they have, and then they just hold each other. Steve's lips resting against Bucky's chin. Bucky's breath on Steve's cheek. He falls asleep first, and Steve is left with his own hazy thoughts for company.

This isn't any different, he thinks again, than what Bucky was so afraid of. Acknowledging that they want what they can't have. Whether they're saying it out loud or not, it's right here between them. Here in their new apartment, on this bed they shouldn't be sharing, with Bucky's leg slung over Steve's. 

Whatever they said before, this feels more like a beginning than anything else. 

* * * 

Maybe it's something about summer, the heat and the promise of it. Maybe it's the bright lines of sweat it leaves on Bucky's temples and the hollow of his throat. The way it makes Steve's shirt stick to the small of his back, and keeps his hair swept off his forehead. 

Maybe it's just another excuse, but they don't even make it halfway through July before they kiss again. One minute Steve is perched on the kitchen counter, idly running a cube of ice up and down the back of his neck while Bucky sucks on a piece of his own at the table, and the next Bucky's chair is clattering to the side. He's swearing and pressed up right between Steve's legs. Kissing Steve's throat with icy lips.

"Buck," Steve gasps, clutching Bucky's shoulders. "What are you—"

"The fuck am I _supposed_ to do when you're—when I gotta watch you..."

He never does finish his thought, but it doesn't matter. Steve's already wrapping his legs around Bucky's waist, pulling his shirt up and yanking it off so he can press cold fingertips to the smooth skin of Bucky's back. Bucky shivers and hums, running his tongue right up to the tip of Steve's chin. Picking Steve up and carrying him over to the Murphy bed that they usually don't bother putting up.

"Lemme try something," he says once he's dropped Steve on his back and is kneeling in front of him. 

Steve's too stunned to even ask what, but _something,_ it turns out, is Bucky pulling Steve's shorts off and dragging the tip of his ice cold tongue from Steve's balls up to the tip of his cock. 

"Good?" he asks over Steve's gasps.

"Jesus, fuck, it's _cold,_ Bucky."

"Yeah," Bucky agrees, doing it again and again till Steve is squirming and tugging on Bucky's hair. Then he spits out the last bit of ice to melt low on Steve's stomach, and takes Steve in his mouth all at once. Licking and sucking until the chill has faded. Until it's just heat and suction and Steve's head spinning. 

"Bucky, Buck, stop."

Bucky lets Steve slip out of his mouth but doesn't pull away, so when Steve looks down at him he's faced with his own swollen cock resting against Bucky's wet chin. 

"Don't wanna come yet," Steve says, still feeling like he's about to. 

"When _do_ you want to?" Bucky asks with eyes bright, and lips wet with spit and precum. He knows exactly what he's asking. He's not _supposed_ to be asking for this though.

 _We shouldn't do this anymore. We shouldn't do this anymore._ Steve hears it in his head still, all the time. But maybe _shouldn't_ isn't the same thing as _won't._

"Buck…"

"Fuck me," Bucky says, dragging his fist hard down Steve's length. "I want you to."

Steve groans, letting his head fall back on the bed. "Goddammit, you jerk, you're giving me whiplash. _You're_ the one who said—"

Bucky kisses his cock, warm and lingering, and Steve shuts up. He watches Bucky climb on top of him after, straddling him and looking like something straight out of a dirty magazine in just his little cotton shorts. 

"I know, I'm sorry," Bucky says. "I just… it felt so good with you, Stevie. Never been able to stop thinking about it."

There's a violent fluttering in Steve's chest, a roar of heat straight down his core. "Then just take it, Buck. I'll fuck you any time you want."

Bucky's tongue darts out to wet his lips and he sinks lower on Steve's lap, letting his ass brush back against Steve's bare cock. 

"Just sex?"

Of course it's not just sex. It wouldn't feel the way it does if it were just sex.

"Yeah," Steve says, because if Bucky wants to pretend, he'll pretend. 

"And you'll get yourself a pretty dame who'll keep you in line, soon as you can? Have a bunch'a little angry blond kids for me to spoil?"

"Buck, c'mon."

"You promise me," Bucky says, squaring his jaw. "Promise that fucking me wont get in the way of you having that. It won't stop you from doing the right thing."

"The _right_ thing?" Steve asks, not bothering to keep the bitterness out of his voice. Maybe it's the easy thing—maybe it's what he wants for Bucky because he wants everything to be safe and smooth for him—but he doesn't know how to believe it's right for everyone. He knows it's not right for him. 

"Stevie."

Bucky doesn't say anything else, he doesn't need to. There's a little something desperate in his voice, and Steve can't help it, he's already folding under it. He doesn't know how not to when he wants Bucky so bad, and Bucky wants him too. At least this way they can have each other, until they can't anymore.

"It won't get in the way," Steve says, letting the rest of it go. He'll give up this part of Bucky when he has to, but he can't promise he'll ever find this with someone else. He can't imagine he'll live long enough for it to even matter, but Bucky doesn't ever like talking about Steve's life expectancy. "I'll just fuck you when you need it, that's it. I'll fuck you so good, Buck."

"And when _you_ need it," Bucky says, breathier now. "When you need it, I wanna… I'll be here, Steve. I'll be good for you."

"I know you will," Steve says, running his fingers feather light up Bucky's thighs and then giving the right side of his ass a slap. "Get some slick and a rubber, and then come back here, just like this."

Bucky bites his lip again—he's always goddamn biting his lip and making Steve crazy—and hurries to follow Steve's directions, kicking his shorts off as he goes. He can't find the Vaseline, and Steve's not entirely sure it ever made it here when they moved, but he gets a bottle of olive oil from one of the kitchen cabinets, handing it to Steve before straddling him again

"This is _expensive,"_ Steve says, a little scandalized even as he twists the lid off.

"It's that or nothing, and I ain't choosing nothing."

Steve grins, dribbling oil on his fingers. "Get up a sec, let me scoot back."

Bucky raises himself up on his knees and Steve shifts so he's upright against the pillows at his back. Now when Bucky lowers himself back over his lap, Steve can easily reach behind Bucky and run slippery fingers down the crease of his ass. It's just as easy to press the tip of his finger inside him once he reaches Bucky's hole, and Bucky hums low in his throat, sinking into it.

"Been waiting for this, huh?"

Bucky nods, scraping his teeth over his bottom lip once Steve's finger is as deep as it'll go. 

"Gonna ride me good?"

"Mm, yeah Stevie… gimme another."

Steve shakes his head, holding his hand still and tugging at Bucky's hip till he lifts up and then lowers himself again. It's a hell of a view already—Bucky fucking himself slowly on Steve's finger, chest flushed, cock fat and perfect—and they're just getting started. 

"Please, Steve," Bucky says after a little while of just heavy breathing and the slick sounds of Steve's finger moving in and out of him, and this time Steve lets him have it. Prodding at his rim and then pressing a second finger in. Watching every little shift in Bucky's face as he sighs and takes what Steve gives him. 

He's just as hot and tight inside as Steve remembers. Just as eager to have Steve stretch him open. Soon he's grinding down on three of Steve's fingers, sweat beading in the bow of his upper lip and down the center of his chest, shining along the tight swell of muscle.

"Those tits are goddamn gorgeous," Steve says, thrilling at the way the words light Bucky's cheeks up even brighter. "Touch ‘em for me, will you, sweetheart?"

He's almost expecting the spell to be broken, for Bucky to roll his eyes or tell Steve to fuck off and do it himself, but Bucky just groans and brings his hands up to thumb over his own nipples. Flicking and circling them while he rides Steve's hand, his back arching suddenly and his chest pressing outward when Steve curls his fingers hard against Bucky's prostate. 

"Ah, Steve, _Stevie."_

Steve doesn't let up, rubbing over that bundle of nerves again and again until Bucky's thighs are shivering where they're pressed against Steve's hips, nipples pinched tight between his own fingers.

When he cries out Steve's name again his voice cracks, and Steve cracks too, slipping his fingers out of Bucky and pulling him down roughly with a hand on the back of his neck so he can kiss him. Nipping at trembling lips and licking into the heat of Bucky's mouth while Bucky rocks against him, empty and wet and needy.

"Put the rubber on me, baby, an' then you can have it," Steve says with his fingers tight in Bucky's curls, letting go when Bucky reaches for the condom on the bed and fumbles to roll it over Steve's cock. Steve rubs some oil over it, then glides his hand over Bucky's cock too, pumping it a few times till its slick and shining. "You still gonna last for me if I do this?"

"I-I…" Bucky's head tips back when Steve strokes him again. "Y-yeah, no—I don't know, Stevie, it feels… it's so good, please."

That sounds like a no, so Steve stops stroking and gets a firm grip around Bucky's base instead, tugging a little until Bucky lifts his hips obediently, leaving room for Steve to reach behind him and line himself up. Gasping when Bucky's body tries to draw him in the moment he starts pressing inside.

"Jesus, Buck, you're so hungry for it."

Bucky nods, eyes squeezing closed as he bears down and swallows Steve up inch by inch, drowning him in heat. The way he moans when Steve bottoms out—so deep and satisfied, like he's just been given the only thing he needs—sends sparks snapping and dancing all along Steve's nerves. Bucky is so fucking beautiful like this, so soft and honest and raw. The muscles in his legs straining and shaking when he lifts himself to slide up Steve's cock and then sink over it again. 

"That's perfect, Buck, that's so good. You're so good, aren't you?"

Bucky whines and blushes, lifting himself again. Clenching around just the head of Steve's cock before he takes the whole length back in. 

"Need me to help you?" Steve asks, watching Bucky's eyebrows draw together as he fucks himself.

Bucky's eyes flutter open, ocean blue ringing big, black pupils, and he nods his head. "P-please. Please, Stevie, yeah."

Steve nods, reaching up to pinch Bucky's chin firmly and pull him into a kiss. "Turn over for me then."

Bucky kisses him back first, with wet lips that press sweet and soft to Steve's like a thank you, then he pulls off of Steve and gets on his hands and knees next to him. Knees wide apart, like he knows right where he needs to be for Steve to comfortably settle in behind him. To take his cock in hand and push the head of it against Bucky's twitching hole, open and soft for him.

"Stevie—"

Steve drives right in, with a sharp slap of hips against Bucky's ass, and Bucky groans, his head dropping forward to hang between his shoulders.

"Again," he says.

Steve moves on instinct—watching the red of his cock sinking in between the soft, round curves of Bucky's pale ass again and again—too dazed and thrilled to make any conscious decisions.

Every bit of this is too incredible to process. The way Bucky holds Steve so tightly inside himself, how beautiful he is with sweat streaked along the broad lines of his shoulders. How he whimpers as Steve pulls back, and cries out when he slams back in. 

"Y-yes," he gasps. "Yes, like that."

Steve lets go of Bucky's cock to run both hands down the length of Bucky's back, then up over his shoulders so he can hold them tight and yank Bucky towards himself when he fucks in again, falling into a quick, rough rhythm. It's going to leave Bucky bruised from Steve's hipbones, but Bucky's eating it right up. Moaning and fisting his hands in the sheets. Arching his back so there's no doubt in the world that his ass is all Steve's. 

"Steve, God, _God,_ I'm—"

Whatever he is, it's lost in a choked off moan when Steve shifts the angle of his hips, fucking in so deep it makes his toes curl.

"Oh Christ, oh Steve. Please, please, please," Bucky sobs, dropping down to his elbows, his forehead pressed to the bed.

Steve follows him down to kiss him with wet open lips right between his shoulder blades, and then all along his spine as he reaches underneath Bucky to where his cock hangs stiff and heavy. Bucky sobs again when Steve wraps his hand around it, his ass clenching so tight around Steve's cock that he has to bite his own lip so he won't come on the spot. 

"D-don't stop," Bucky begs. "I'm s-so close, Stevie. Please, I need it."

"I know, baby," Steve says after taking a steadying breath. This whole thing started because Bucky needed, and all Steve wants is to be the one who gives to him. Someday, it'll be someone else, but for now—in this one room that belongs to them, heavy with sweat and summer and sex—it's only him.

He draws out slow and grinds back in as deep as before, squeezing his hand tight as he drags it along Bucky's shaft. Bucky makes a pained sound that goes right to Steve's cock, followed by a string of broken, repeated words. _Yes,_ and _please,_ and _Steve,_ coming out higher for every time Steve slams into him, for every stroke of his fist around Bucky's cock, until his voice is so frantic, so delirious with want, that Steve's starting to shake just from the sound of it. 

He won't stop though, won't finish before Bucky's had his fill. He fucks him deep and desperate, curls his fingers in Bucky's hair and pulls as he palms over the dripping tip of Bucky's cock, and suddenly Bucky goes stiff, his cries go soundless.

"That's it baby, that's right. Come for me now, Buck," Steve tells him, and a breath later Bucky gasps and convulses under him, spilling and spilling over Steve's hand as Steve fucks him through it. Whimpering and grinding back against Steve even when he must be aching with it, until Steve follows him over with a choked back cry.

He presses in as deep as he can once more, yanking back on Bucky's hair harder than he means to, but Bucky just moans and clenches around him. Whines out, "Yeah, Stevie, yeah," until Steve's hips stop jerking and he loosens his grip, petting over Bucky's damp curls instead. 

"Oh Buck," he breathes, when he finally slips out of Bucky and sees the pink, puffy rim of his hole, still open and twitching. "You were made for this, sweetheart, don't tell me you weren't."

Bucky shivers when Steve runs a finger over his entrance. Sighs when Steve leans over him, pressing his chest to Bucky's back and kissing his neck. 

"Only for you," he says, so soft Steve almost misses it. 

He doesn't want to take his hands off Bucky, but he kisses him once more on the shoulder, whispers _that's right,_ and gets off the bed so he can clean up. He throws the rubber away and gets a damp cloth for Bucky, finding him sprawled out on his back when he returns to the bed. 

"It's all over the sheets," Bucky says, cracking his eyes open for a moment before covering them with his arm. His voice is hoarse, his lips the kind of full they only get when he's been really biting at them. 

"Oil's all over you though."

"S'fine. It'll make my skin soft."

Steve smiles, running the cool cloth over Bucky's face and throat just because he knows it will feel good. Then slowly down his chest and his stomach, over the damp curls between his legs.

"It's already soft," he says, sliding the cloth over Bucky's balls and then gently between his cheeks when Bucky bends his knees and spreads his legs. "Like a peach," he adds, pinching Bucky's ass lightly before moving on to wipe down his thighs. 

"Shut up," Bucky says, his eyes still covered and his cheeks bright pink. "You wanna compare me to fruit, do it when you're still inside me."

Steve considers that, then he stretches out next to Bucky, runs his hand over Bucky's sturdy thigh, and down to the wet heat under his balls. Presses two fingers back inside him, easy as anything.

"Fuck," Bucky says, more of a breath than a word. His legs fall open wider, like petals opening up, and Steve almost chokes.

"Jesus, Buck. You're a goddamn dream, you know that?"

Bucky just hums, so Steve folds himself over him, kissing those sweet, swollen lips while he pumps his fingers. In and out, deep and slow.

He wishes they could stay just like this, wrapped up in heat and trust and want. Wishes Bucky could only ever be his, that he could be Bucky's everything. 

"Stevie," Bucky says, dreamy and soft. Not asking for anything, just melting around Steve's fingers with a smile on his lips that Steve kisses and kisses and kisses.

"Yeah, Buck," Steve says in between presses of lips. "M'here. Right here for you."

He keeps saying it, keeps kissing and touching and making whispered promises he's not allowed to keep, because maybe when he's inside Bucky he can say anything he wants. All the truths that he wishes could be theirs forever. 

He breathes them over Bucky's skin, prints them on him with his lips. "So good for me, Bucky. My perfect boy."

Bucky moans and nods and shivers under Steve's touch.

Steve's, only Steve's, for as long as he can have him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3 will still be going up on Saturday! Thank you so much for your comments on the first chapters...it's not an exaggeration to say each one makes my heart light up 💖


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He won't make Bucky beg though, not tonight. Not this last night. 
> 
> Tonight he'll just make him feel as good as he can for as long as he can. Pour himself into Bucky's bones so Bucky will feel Steve there when he's gone to war, still warm and safe deep inside him. 
> 
> "On your back for me, sweetheart," Steve says, and Bucky rolls off of him to obey.

So it was a beginning after all, that kiss on Steve's birthday—or they hadn't actually hit the end yet, the summer before when Steve thought they'd crashed right into it. He keeps waiting for them to find it again, after they sleep together, but it doesn't come and it doesn't come. They've found something else instead. 

It's not all the time, this thing that they have. It doesn't change the way they are together when they're not in bed. Doesn't change that Bucky starts making time for dates again now that he's not quite as desperate for extra work, and Steve occasionally goes on one or two of his own. 

But it's there, always there, when they need it. It's messy kisses when Steve's pissed off about any number of things, and Bucky lets him get it out with teeth and tongue. It's Bucky coming home worn out and wound up. Undressing as soon as he sees Steve, softening for him the moment Steve starts to open him up. 

And sometimes it's not for any reason at all. It's just lazy suckjobs, with Bucky on his stomach low on the bed, head between Steve's legs for more than an hour. Bucky leaning over the kitchen counter and writhing on Steve's fingers. Steve kissing Bucky's shoulder to wake him before he spreads his ass and slips inside, sinking back into the heat he made a home in the night before.

It's just a piece of their lives now, a constant as the months go by, and then the years. Each July that comes around finding them still sharing the same apartment, watching the sky light up from the same rooftop, side by side.

But in 1939 something else begins, and it's not like the start between them at all. Not hopeful and heated and good. Not Steve's hands on Bucky and Bucky's eyelashes fluttering closed. 

This is outside of them, beyond them. This is a war. 

It's fear and it's frustration. It gets closer and closer until Pearl Harbor is attacked, and then it's right upon them in some ways, and infuriatingly separate in others. Distant allies and distant fighting. A whole page full of reasons Steve can't go and play his part when the men around him are taking up the call. Steve's hearing, his vision, his heart, lungs, sinuses—none of them deemed good enough. But they don't know, those men in charge. They don't know the whole that all those parts of Steve make up. They don't know Steve's a goddamn fighter. That it kills him _not_ to fight, _not_ to step in, when injustice is running rampant.

It feels so huge, so present, once their country has joined the war—once it's taking up so much space around them, between them—and he and Bucky don't wind up in each other's arms as often anymore. It almost doesn't seem right, to find peace in each other when there's none to be found outside of them. Steve doesn't want to be comforted, doesn't want to be comfortable—he wants to make a difference. 

"Would you just... Steve, relax," Bucky says, reaching out a hand to touch Steve's leg. They're sitting on the couch—the yellow one they moved over from Steve's old apartment years ago, even though it was already old then—and Steve has been tapping his foot incessantly. His entire body is so terribly on edge he feels a breath away from breaking into pieces.

Bucky has gotten his orders. Steve has not, and he never will. He doesn't even know how to bear all the ways he hates this. 

The only thing as bad as Steve not being able to do his part is the fact that they'll be separated. That Bucky will need something and Steve won't be there to give it. That Bucky will be in danger and Steve will just be fucking _sitting here,_ a world away and helpless. 

"You leave in the morning," Steve says. They both know it, of course, but they haven't been talking about it. They spent the whole evening wandering around the World Exposition of Tomorrow—Bucky wide-eyed and boyish, even all dressed up in his crisp Army Greens. Steve tried to care about the lights and sounds and smiling girls, but he didn't. He doesn't. 

Bucky's going to war, and Steve isn't. 

"Steve…" Bucky's hand is still on Steve's leg, cupping his knee and stroking the side of it with his thumb. They haven't been touching like this much lately, haven't slept together in months. Bucky's been away for training, and Steve's been eaten alive by envy and fear, and now he wants to cry at this simple, familiar touch. He wants to press Bucky's hand there and never let it go. 

"I should be going with you."

Bucky shakes his head, breathes out low and heavy. They _have_ been talking about this.

"No, you shouldn't."

"Bucky—"

"No, Jesus, when will you drop this? They have health requirements for a _reason,_ Steve. What do you think happens if you have an attack in the middle of a goddamn battlefield? What happens if your heart gives out? What—"

"Then I'll die!" Steve says over him, almost shouts it, and watches the color go out of Bucky's face in a blink. "Facts are facts, Buck, we all know I'm never gonna grow old anyway! At least I can go out with—"

"Stop it, shut up." Bucky's on his feet, backing away from Steve like his words are caustic, infectious. "Don't you fucking say that."

"It's true!"

"No, it's not. It's _not,"_ Bucky growls, stalking right back into Steve's space, voice rough the way Steve knows so well. Forced and hard, to hide what's underneath. "You're—Stevie, you're gonna… come here."

Steve lets Bucky pull him to his feet, lets him crush him in a hug. When Bucky speaks again Steve feels the hum of the words against his cheek where it's pressed to Bucky's chest. 

"You're gonna take care of yourself, and you're gonna be safe, and they're gonna find ways to make your heart stronger. Help you breathe easier. You're gonna be a—" Bucky's voice breaks and Steve squeezes him tight around the waist. "—an old man when you die, Steve."

Steve can't think of a single thing worse than dying an old man. Not when there's every possibility right now of Bucky dying young. 

"Not without you," Steve says, soft into Bucky's shirt. 

He shouldn't have. It's the kind of honest he only lets out when they're naked, and even then he doesn't say things as real as this. But tomorrow Bucky will be crossing the Atlantic and taking Steve's heart in his pocket. Not the weak one in Steve's chest—the scarred one with damaged valves that isn't going to get better—but the one that's been beating for Bucky for as long as Steve can remember. 

Tonight, he's still here next to Steve. His hands are holding Steve tight, running up his back, stroking through his hair. They're cupping his face and tipping it up so Steve's looking into the soft blue eyes he's known his whole life.

"Take that back," Bucky says, his fingertips so gentle on Steve's cheeks.

"No." 

Why should he? Why should he keep lying when they've been doing that for _years,_ and for what? Every time they've fucked and kissed and fallen asleep tangled together, and then woken up and pretended it didn't mean a thing—that's never stopped it from meaning everything, and they both damn well know it. 

"Stevie…"

Bucky's eyes are pleading, but Steve won't give in. Not tonight. Not when tomorrow the whole world shifts. 

"Take me to bed," he says, because they'll never agree about Steve not going to war or living without Bucky, but they can always agree on this. On the way they fit together like their bodies were made to curve around each other. Filling in each other's spaces and leaving no room for anything else. Nothing but them.

Bucky keeps his eyes on Steve for a minute longer and Steve can see it all over his face, the way he's trying to come up with an argument. The way he knows there's no point. They are what they are, and this might be their last chance to lose themselves in it.

In the end he doesn't say anything, just bows his head and presses his forehead to Steve's for a moment, then lifts him off his feet. 

The Murphy bed is folded down, still covered in sheets rumpled from the night before. They had shared the bed but hadn't touched, beyond holding hands in the space between them. Bucky was lost in thought, and Steve was trying to find the right words to say how proud of Bucky he was, and how jealous and terrified and furious. Not at Bucky, but at the war and his own body, and the miles and miles that would soon separate it from the person who's always been his home. 

Bucky sets Steve down carefully on his back, hovering over him. He's twenty-six, now—grown all the way into a man over these years they've been playing house and pretending they weren't. Make believe on top of make believe. His chin is still soft, but the rest of his features are stronger, bolder. Sharp jaw and broad, high cheekbones. Dark hair curling in the open V of his shirt, half-unbuttoned absentmindedly when they got home, and then forgotten.

He's the most handsome thing Steve has ever seen. He ought to be married by now, with a brood of handsome children. They promised not to let this, _them,_ get in the way, but neither of them have really even tried to move around it.

And now... well, now the war will take care of that for them. Break their routines, their patterns. Force them to find new ones when Bucky is home again, and they've both figured out how to live without the other close enough to touch. 

"Steve… don't. Come on," Bucky says, still looking down at him. 

"Don't what?"

"Don't look at me like this is... like it's—"

"You know what it is, Buck."

It's the end. It's come after so much more time than Steve expected, but there was never any way around it finding them.

Bucky shakes his head, lowering himself so he's blanketing Steve. His weight still carefully supported by his forearms braced on either side of him, so instead of pressure he's just heat and quiet intent on top of Steve. 

"I'm still yours," he says in a whisper, lips brushing the edge of Steve's jaw. "I'm still yours tonight."

So he does know—of course he does—that he won't be Steve's tomorrow.

Part of Steve wants to fight him, to claim him and keep him, but he's already been given so much. He still has this night, and then he'll let Bucky go. He'll grow away from Steve, and that will be okay. As long as he comes back safe, that's okay. 

Steve cups Bucky's cheek, turning his face so they can kiss softly, again and again till Bucky's lips are wet and open. Soft and pink the way he's always been for Steve.

"Tell me what you want," Steve says, running his fingers down Bucky's spine, then slipping them under his untucked shirt to press against the small of his back. "How do you want it tonight?"

Bucky's cheeks flush faintly, his eyelashes lowering, as if he hasn't looked Steve in the eye a hundred times while Steve was buried inside him. 

"Slow, Stevie. Just... make it last. Make me last."

Steve can do that. He knows exactly how to build Bucky's pleasure, and how to keep it where he wants it. Not enough to let Bucky come from it, but enough to have him trembling and whining, and finally begging. 

He won't make Bucky beg though, not tonight. Not this last night. 

Tonight he'll just make him feel as good as he can for as long as he can. Pour himself into Bucky's bones so Bucky will feel Steve there when he's gone to war, still warm and safe deep inside him. 

"On your back for me, sweetheart," Steve says, and Bucky rolls off of him to obey. Bending his knees and spreading them for Steve after they've both gotten undressed. Taking two fingers almost right from the start when Steve slicks them up and fits them against Bucky's hole.

Steve leans over him to kiss his neck while he works him open. Pressing his lips over and over again to Bucky's collarbones, and his shoulders, and the little scar on his left bicep he got from hopping a fence with Steve when they were seven and eight. 

Bucky's hands are moving over him the whole time, the same way Steve's lips are charting Bucky's skin. Carding through Steve's hair and stroking his back. Wrapping around his arms to graze over them from shoulder to wrist, like he wants to be sure to touch every part of Steve before the night is through. 

They go on like this for so long Steve's hand is aching, but Bucky's hot underneath him, so soft around his fingers, and he wishes they could just stay like this. In this hazy, sweet place where Steve's lazily rocking against Bucky's hip without any real intent yet, and Bucky's just beginning to let out little moans when he exhales. 

Steve loves those sounds though, and he starts to pay more attention to Bucky's prostate to draw more of them from Bucky's throat. Prodding and stroking in between thrusts of his fingers until Bucky's panting, until there's so much precum dripping down his cock that Steve can't resist leaning over and licking it up.

"Shit, if you... I won't last, Stevie. I can't—"

Steve closes his lips around Bucky's cock, humming as he sucks the head gently. Just long enough to feel Bucky clench around his fingers, and then pulling off. 

"Ready for me?" he asks, as if it isn't obvious in every line of Bucky's body. 

"Yeah, yeah. D'ya… you want some too?" Bucky asks, looking up at Steve from under heavy eyelids.

Jesus Christ, how Steve ever got lucky enough to have had so many years with this man in his bed, he'll never know. He doesn't know how his heart has even kept up with it all.

And he does want some, too. Bucky's rarely the one to slip something inside Steve, usually preferring it the other way around, but every once in a while he'll offer, and Steve always says yes. He loves Bucky every way, any way he can be touched by him.

So while Steve gets the condom on and smears some Vaseline over it, Bucky slicks his fingers up too, and when they fit themselves together again—Steve pushing into Bucky with a slow, easy press of his hips—Bucky runs warm fingertips over Steve's skin until he's rubbing the pad of one finger over Steve's hole.

The angle's too awkward for him to get it deep once he's worked it inside, but Steve loves it just like this. Loves it so much being inside Bucky and having Bucky inside him too. 

He fucks Bucky the same way he fingered him, tender and unhurried, and Bucky gets two fingers in Steve after awhile, up to the second knuckle. Just keeps them there, hooked inside Steve so they're connected every way they can be, lips brushing and chests pressed together. It's been a cool June so far, but it starts to feel like the peak of summer has settled in around them. Skin dewy with sweat and flushed with the heat of it all, like the very first time they did this—but _how_ can it have been so long ago now? How can this be the last time?

Steve can't kiss Bucky enough. Can't ever get enough of the give of his lips and the scrape of his five o'clock shadow. He keeps everything as slow as he can, but it's all so deep, so possessive. His tongue in Bucky's mouth, his fingers in his hair. His cock held so tight inside Bucky while Bucky's fingers hold him open. It's speeding him along to his breaking point, winding up in his gut, aching in his balls. 

And for all that they've taken their time with each other, it's still brought Bucky to the same place he always ends up when Steve has him under his hands. Shaking and red-cheeked and desperate, voice strained and breathless when he speaks.

"Steve, I'm sorry, I wanna keep—I wanna stay like this, but I'm…I'm—"

"You're perfect, Buck," Steve says, stroking his face. "This was perfect. Here, c'mere, I got you."

He pulls at Bucky, rolling them onto their sides, then guiding Bucky's leg up over his hip to keep him nice and open. With one hand he holds Bucky close, and with the other he presses Bucky's cock to his stomach, so Bucky can rut against him while Steve fucks him over the edge. Finally giving up on being slow and just driving into Bucky with rough, needy thrusts that hardly manage to keep any kind of rhythm. 

Bucky's lips are on Steve's forehead, his fingers pushing back inside of him, and Steve never comes without getting Bucky there first, but he's dangerously close to it now.

"Buck, Buck... c'mon, baby. Let me feel you," he says, curling his hand around Bucky's cock and stroking him off tight and quick. Barely pulling out of him at all now, and just grinding up so hard, so desperately, that Bucky has to feel it—the way Steve wants to just get all the way inside him. Wants to get so deep there'll be no shaking him loose. No distance and no endings, just the heat of Bucky's skin always, always pressed against his.

He doesn't even realize he's crying until Bucky's thumb slips over his wet cheek, and then it's too much, it's all too much, and Steve hits his climax with a punched out gasp. Squeezing Bucky's cock and moaning with relief when Bucky shudders and clenches around him, coming right alongside him and dripping over Steve's hand. 

He keeps saying Steve's name, broken and halting with their lips crushed together, and Steve can't stop crying, can't stop pressing into Bucky even though he's going soft and Bucky's fingers aren't inside him anymore. He's just holding Steve now, stroking his hair and kissing his cheeks and still, still saying his name. 

"Steve, Stevie, please. Please don't cry."

Steve doesn't want to be doing this. He buries his face in the crook of Bucky's neck so Bucky won't have to see it, the way his tears keep coming and his face is contorted with the pain of it, the terrible weight of Bucky leaving and Steve staying.

Bucky folds him in his arms and just holds him after that, lips pressed hard to Steve's hair. His breath hitches every so often, chest shuddering against Steve, so Steve knows he's crying too.

They should talk about this. They should say all the things they've held back, that they've only shared in whispered fragments that could be blamed on the heat of the moment, the heady haze of sex. But Steve supposes there's really nothing more to it—there aren't really any secrets between them. They know they've broken their own rules a hundred times over. They know they won't share this bed again.

It has to be the middle of the night by now, but they lie awake and silent, still touching everywhere they can be. Tears drying on each other's skin. 

"Stevie, if I could…" Bucky says, sometime near morning when the dark of night is just beginning to lift.

"I know," Steve says. His hand is over Bucky's heart, and he knows what's inside it. "Me too."

Bucky exhales and keeps moving his fingers in little circles over Steve's side. He doesn't stop until they can hear the city waking up outside their windows, and they can't keep holding on anymore. 

They move around each other seamlessly once they're up, like they always have—getting ready, getting breakfast together, cleaning it up side by side. Every step of the routine making Steve so painfully aware of how wrong everything will feel when it's only him. 

And then it's time, before Steve is ready to face it. He can feel it in Bucky's restlessness and the true light coming in through the windows. It's time to say goodbye, but Steve doesn't want to hear it, he won't say it. 

Bucky gets his shoes on, then takes Steve's face in his hands and kisses him. Steve rises up on the balls of his feet to get as close as he can. 

When Bucky lets go of him there's a beat of quiet so heavy Steve thinks he might crack under it, but he won't send Bucky away like that. He won't cry in front of him again. 

He smiles, touches Bucky's face, and Bucky manages to give a weak smile back to him.

"Don't you dare do anything stupid until I get back," he says.

"How can I? You're taking all the stupid with you."

Bucky's dimples appear as his smile deepens, and he shakes his head. "Gonna miss that mouth of yours."

It's a joke, but it makes Steve's chest ache. It makes Bucky's smile waver again a moment later. 

Steve's going to miss those lips so goddamn much. He's going to miss them being his to touch and taste. He'll miss the way they part to say his name.

He wants to tell Bucky he loves him, the way he's never let himself before, but he holds the words on his tongue. 

"Be safe, Buck. I'm proud of you."

Bucky's smile steadies again and he lifts his right hand in a salute. He's Sergeant James Barnes now, he doesn't belong to Steve, but Steve presses one more kiss to his lips anyway. 

Bucky says, "Stevie..." and then nothing else. He doesn't say goodbye, and neither does Steve. 

It takes every ounce of resolve he has to not chase after Bucky when he turns around, after one last long look, and walks out the door. He has to curl his hands into fists, let his nails bite into his skin, but he stays in place. Right there in their empty apartment, counting the minutes until he's sure Bucky's too far for Steve to catch up with him. 

They'd agreed that Steve wouldn't see him off, that they'd just say goodbye here—or not say it—so it would be like any other day.

It's not, though. It's not. Bucky's going to war, and Steve is left here with only the silence. With an empty bed covered in sheets that smell like Bucky's skin and sweat. That smell like them, together. 

He looks at the bed, and the way he sees it, he only has two options. 

He can curl up on it and let the terrible ache inside him rise up and take him over, or he can get out of here. He can find another recruitment office and see if he can manage to do something stupid before Bucky has even really left.

He never promised that he wouldn't.

* * *

It surprises even Steve, who knows his own impulsivity better than anyone, just how quickly he manages to get into what Bucky would call trouble. 

Within hours he's been recruited by a Doctor Abraham Erskine. Within days he's training at Camp Lehigh with men twice his size, and within a few more _Steve_ is twice his size. 

This is not something he could tell Bucky in a letter. It's not something he can fully grasp himself, even looking right at it in a mirror after being treated with Dr. Erskine's serum and Howard Stark's vita-rays. It's like something out of one of Bucky's cheap paperbacks, except somehow it's real.

Steve is tall, and heavy with muscles he didn't build himself. His heart is perfect. His lungs are a dream. 

He cries that first night, curled up on his cot and feeling all wrong in the space around him. He's taking up too much of it. His body isn't the one Bucky knows. Not the one that's been touched and kissed by him. Not the one that's been inside him, that fit so perfectly there. 

He doesn't regret it, he doesn't. He's _doing_ something now. He can help, and he can live, so much longer than they ever thought he could. But he feels like he's lost something too. Not just Bucky, or Erskine—who Steve can still barely believe was just killed like that, before Steve had even figured out how to move around in his new body—but part of himself too. It almost feels like he's lost _all_ of himself right now, but Erskine said the serum wouldn't change who he was. He said that Steve was a good man. 

Steve presses his face into his pillow and shakes with the sobs that wrack his chest, keeping them silent with his teeth clenched together. It's only been a week since he last saw Bucky and he misses him so much he can hardly breathe with it, even though his lungs are strong and clear. 

Bucky never claimed Steve. He never said that Steve was his, but he _was._ He was Bucky's long before the first time they kissed. He was Bucky's even when they went months without touching, and he's still Bucky's now, except that he's all wrong. 

Maybe he's a good man, maybe this was the best thing that ever could have happened to him, but his hands couldn't fit in Bucky's now, like they used to. His head couldn't sit just under his chin. His arms couldn't be closed right up in Bucky's hands. 

He could break Bucky in two with his new supersoldier strength, if he wanted to. 

All he wants is to be in his arms and hear him saying _Stevie,_ all soft and certain, because he never said it but he knew Steve was his, too. 

And now Steve is something brand new.

* * * 

He never does tell Bucky about the serum. He doesn't tell him about the USO tour, or the patriotic suit, or the fact that to the entire nation he's known as Captain America now. 

This wasn't what he wanted. He wanted to be at Bucky's side, even if it was just in spirit. He wanted to be a soldier—somewhere, anywhere—not a fraudulent Captain.

He's never felt smaller, even in this great big body, than when he performs for the weathered troops in Italy instead of the civilians back in the US, and they can't stand the sight of him. He can't stand the sight of himself, either. He should be doing more than this. He was literally reformed to be able to do more.

And then he feels even smaller still when Peggy tells him those tired, weary men were what remains of the 107th regiment. Bucky's regiment. 

Steve feels broken down into the tiniest pieces when Phillips tells him that the rest of the unit were either killed, or being held captive in Austria. That he thinks Bucky belonged to the former group.

After that Steve doesn't really feel anything, or maybe he feels everything—too big and blinding to even identify exactly what it is. 

It's not until he's hurtling through the sky over the Austrian border with Peggy and Howard that the nameless, all-encompassing flame burns down into something sharp and specific and familiar. It's the same thing he felt when Bucky climbed through his window nearly a decade ago, with his knuckles bruised and his heart so soft.

Bucky might still be alive, he has to be, and he needs Steve. And maybe Steve's body has changed, but Erskine was right about what the serum does. About how it amplifies what's already there. 

If Bucky needs Steve, then Steve will tear the whole goddamn world to pieces to get to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have more editing to do for the final chapters, but if I can get the next one up midweek again I will! I know this is a stressful time for everyone and I wish I could give you soft pining and kisses to read every day of the week ❤


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be over. He wasn't supposed to taste Bucky again. Wasn't sure Bucky would even look at him and want him the way he used to, now that Steve is something different, but…
> 
> "Steve... Stevie, Jesus, God," Bucky's saying, his hands moving over Steve, from his hair, to his shoulders, to his waist. Reverent and possessive. Lips pressing all over his face, again and again, while Steve just holds on and feels like the sun's raining drops of gold all over him.

It doesn't take full world destruction, but Steve does end up taking most of a factory down.

There's a moment of horror when he first finds Bucky—strapped to a cold table in a cold room—where all Steve sees are his glassy eyes and parted lips, and he thinks he must be too late. That Phillips was right and there was never any hope of rescuing him.

But then the roar of panic in his ears subsides and he hears Bucky's voice, weak and mumbling. He rushes to his side and when Bucky's eyes focus on him, he smiles. Even though he's hurt and Steve is too big and this feels like a nightmare. 

Steve only has time to touch Bucky's face once, soft in the palm of his hand, and then he has to drag Bucky along with him before everything falls down around them. 

He has to watch Bucky crossing a creaking beam on unsteady feet. Watch it fall, and watch Bucky leap to catch the railing on the other side—their only way out. He has to look at the empty space between them that's too far for him to cross, and hear Bucky shout his own words back at him when Steve tells him to go.

" _No,_ not without you!"

Well, Steve can't tell him to do anything different than he'd do himself. So he leaps too, and maybe it's the serum, or maybe it's Bucky waiting for him, eyes pale in the light of the flames rising beneath them, but something carries him all the way there. 

He does take a moment then—even though everything is cracking and falling and snapping with bright lines of fire—to wrap Bucky in his arms and crush him against his chest. 

"The hell happened to you, Stevie?" Bucky asks, voice still a little slow and slurred. "It _is_ you, right?"

"Yeah, Buck, it's me. It's me," Steve assures him, stroking hair that's thick with dirt and sweat and maybe blood. He can't let himself think about it yet. "We gotta get out of here."

Bucky nods and lets Steve pull him along with an arm around his waist, only standing upright on his own once they've made it clear of the factory.

Steve misses the weight of him the moment its gone. He doesn't get to hold him the way he wants to for days after that. There are men to lead, and miles and miles to walk, with an itch in Steve's bones every step of the way back to Italy. With Bucky silent beside him.

It's not until all the reports and medical clearances have been given that Steve gets Bucky alone again. Pulls him into his tent as soon as they’ve gotten cleaned up, and has his arms around him so quick and tight that Bucky makes a startled little exhalation.

"Sorry, sorry, I'm—" Steve begins, pulling back a little to let Bucky breathe, but Bucky yanks him in close again with his hands fisted in the front of Steve's jacket. Rises up on his toes and pulls Steve down so their lips crash together, hungry and familiar. 

This was supposed to be over. He wasn't supposed to taste Bucky again. Wasn't sure Bucky would even look at him and want him the way he used to, now that Steve is something different, but…

"Steve... Stevie, Jesus, God," Bucky's saying, his hands moving over Steve, from his hair, to his shoulders, to his waist. Reverent and possessive. Lips pressing all over his face, again and again, while Steve just holds on and feels like the sun's raining drops of gold all over him. 

He melts into it the way Bucky's always melted for him when Bucky pulls him in tight as can be, and presses his face to Steve's neck. Kissing it and then just keeping his lips there, rough and chapped and warm. 

"Christ, Stevie, my Stevie. Thought I was never gonna see you again."

Steve's breath catches. Bucky's never called him that. Not once in all the years that Steve has belonged to him in every way that he could. 

"You know me better than that. When do I ever let something go?"

Bucky breathes out a wet sounding laugh and squeezes him tighter. "This is so fuckin' weird."

It is, it's all so weird. 

Now that they've gotten past that fierce need to be pressed together, or at least scratched the surface of it, they let each other go long enough to take a seat on Steve's cot. Face to face, and both studying every inch of each other.

"Are you alright?" Steve asks, even though the medic already said that Bucky was, aside from needing some rest and some nourishment. It's hard to judge, when his perspective is all skewed now, but something is different about Bucky. Steve doesn't know if it's the weight of the war, or of something more. 

"Am _I?"_ Bucky says. His face is so tired, marked with scrapes and shadows, but when he gives Steve that familiar look of fond exasperation, he's his same old self. "Jesus Christ, Steve, you've gotta be a foot taller than you were last time I saw you. Did it hurt? Are you okay?"

"Wasn't so bad," Steve says, making his face as earnest as possible when Bucky only looks more suspicious. "It was awful when it was happening, but I'm… Buck, my heart's all fixed now. Lungs are clear as glass."

The worried lines in Bucky's face smooth out all at once, his hands lifting to Steve's face. Fingertips feather light on his cheekbones, such a contrast to how he was touching Steve before.

"You're serious?" Bucky asks. "You're... it will stick? You'll stay healthy?"

When Steve nods, Bucky lets his hands fall from his face, pressing one soft over Steve's heart instead.

"Seems like it. It's been almost half a year and nothing's changed yet."

"Christ," Bucky breathes. His eyes are shining with tears, and Steve never really knew how beautiful they were before. What he thought of as Bucky's eye color was a faded, altered version of the real thing. "So this is you now."

Steve feels his chest go tight in a way that has nothing to do with his lungs. His perfect lungs in his perfect new body that isn't the one Bucky knows. He nods his head, holding his breath. 

"Do you still…" Bucky begins, catching his bottom lip between his teeth like he always does when he's nervous, then letting it go and looking up at Steve. "Do you still want me?"

It takes several long beats before Steve even processes Bucky's words enough to sputter, "Do I still—what? Why the hell wouldn't I?"

Bucky huffs, leaning back from Steve and looking him up and down. "I must have looked different to you before. And you're… you could have _anyone._ "

"And when have I ever wanted anyone but you?"

"Steve…" 

Bucky looks so uncertain it makes Steve want to yell, but he keeps his voice low and takes Bucky's hand in his. He's never been anything but certain about Bucky, and he never should have let him go to war without telling him. He can’t believe how close he came to losing the chance.

"I thought you were _dead_."

"I thought I was too," Bucky says with a humorless laugh. "Steve, I thought—I thought I'd never get out of there, and I'd never have even told you—"

"I love you," Steve says.

Bucky's tired face lights up like the sun spilling bright over dark water. "Yeah," he says. "That."

"No, I meant… I _mean_ it, Buck, I lo—"

"I know, Stevie, Jesus. C'mere," Bucky says with another laugh that's tired still, but soaked through with warmth. His hands curling back in Steve's jacket and tugging him close. "Been in love with you as long as I can remember."

Steve keeps his eyes open and kisses Bucky like it's the first time. Like this is the very start all over again, and maybe it is. A different kind of beginning though, because this one is honest all the way through.

"We're finished then, right?" he says when they've parted to catch their breath. "With the pretending? I can't—I want you to have whatever you want, and if it's not me that's—that's okay, but I can't pretend I'm ever gonna want someone else."

"You listen to a word I just said?" Bucky says. "I _love_ you, and I'm not—yeah _,_ we're finished with that shit. I was so goddamn hung up on doing what we were supposed to and keeping you safe, and it doesn't even matter, does it? We're _not_ safe, we could get blown up tomorrow."

They could. And if they do, Steve will go knowing his heart was right where it belonged.

Bucky's hands are on Steve's face again, his eyes wide and focused. More _Bucky_ than Steve's seen them since he found him on that table. 

"You weren't supposed to follow me."

"You knew I would."

"I knew you would," Bucky agrees, brushing his thumb over Steve's lips. Running a fingertip down the crooked line of his nose and then smiling. "I know you. You're still mine, Stevie."

"Always was."

Bucky nods. Of course he knew it all along. 

They have hardly any privacy with the thin walls of the tent, and even less space, but Steve can't help kissing Bucky again. He doesn't resist when Bucky leans into him harder, pushing him onto his back on the thin cot and climbing on top of him, and that's… that's new, the way Bucky fits on him now. Smaller than him, even if he hadn't lost weight since Steve last saw him. (But he _has,_ and Steve can’t think on it too much.)

"Jesus, you’re a mountain now, aren’t you?" Bucky says, his thoughts in the same place. His hand pressed to Steve’s chest and his legs spread wide to straddle his thighs.

"You mind?" Steve asks.

"Yeah," Bucky says. "Poor me, havin’ to look at all this muscle. Bet your cock’s a real disappointment too."

"Shut up," Steve says, pushing Bucky’s shoulder, then pulling him back to kiss his smiling lips.

"I don’t give a shit how big or small you are, stupid. You’re _you._ You’re mine."

Steve’s pretty sure he’s blushing. He loves that Bucky just keeps saying it now, and that even though he feels different in Steve’s big arms, he still feels right. 

He still makes soft little sounds against Steve’s lips, and his hips roll against Steve’s the same way, needy and earnest. He bites his lip and whines the way he always does when Steve gets his pants open, and he’s smaller in Steve’s grip now, but he’s still thick and warm. He still gasps at the touch and fumbles to get Steve’s cock out too. 

"Fuck, that’s gonna feel good in me," he breathes, running rough fingertips over the thin, sensitive skin.

They don’t have the time or the patience now to go that direction though, and they don’t make any move to. Bucky just slides his cock along Steve’s and leans down to keep kissing him, humming against his lips when Steve wraps one hand around both their cocks, and gets the other in the back of Bucky’s hair. It’s so much shorter now, his curls clipped away, but it still feels so nice. Feels so good just to hold him close and lick into his mouth. To feel him alive and panting, to have him hot in Steve’s hand and slick against his cock.

It feels like a goddamn miracle. Steve still doesn’t even know what the hell happened to Bucky after he was captured. He doesn’t know what those straps were for, or any of that equipment surrounding him, but he's here now, and he’s calling Steve _his._

"Buck… you’re really okay?" Steve asks in between kisses. "They didn’t hurt you too bad?"

Bucky just shakes his head slightly, and Steve doesn’t know if that’s an answer or a dismissal of the question. He means to ask again, but Bucky’s clouding his head with the warmth of his breath and the grind of his cock against Steve’s. He’s mouthing along the line of Steve’s jaw, palming Steve’s chest through his shirt. Whispering right next to Steve’s ear so no one else will hear them.

"Yeah, Steve, like that. Like— _fuck,_ I missed this. Missed you so much, Stevie, I—"

Steve can’t take it, how sweet Bucky’s voice is, how honest he’s being. It makes him want to cry, so he kisses Bucky hard, tightens his grip around their lengths to jerk them faster. He cups Bucky’s neck and holds him close against his chest when Bucky comes, shaking in Steve’s arms and spilling over him in warm spurts. 

"You, too," Bucky murmurs, still rolling his hips against Steve’s cock. Steve is hard as ever, and he’s almost embarrassed by the size of himself now that Bucky is softening next to him.

"I uh, I take a little longer now. I can—"

"Oh yeah?" Bucky cuts him off, leaning back to look him over with eyebrows raised. "I mean you always left me satisfied, Rogers, but going longer doesn’t sound like a bad thing."

"I’m _close,"_ Steve says, feeling his heart rate pick up just at the thought of it. The idea of how long he could keep Bucky on his cock if they had the time. "I just—"

Bucky stops him with a kiss this time, shifting his hips back so they’re not pressed to Steve’s anymore, and getting his hand around him instead. 

"Next time," he breathes against Steve’s lips, "we’re gonna find us some slick, and you’re gonna do this inside me."

Steve nods with a breathy moan, letting his head tip back as Bucky’s fist moves over him, familiar even with the way Steve has grown.

"You’ll fuck me so good, I know you will. Keep going even after I finish, even when I’m crying."

"Love the way you cry for me," Steve says, getting his fingers back in Bucky’s hair. He tugs a little and Bucky hisses, twisting his wrist as he strokes up Steve’s length. 

"You break me down, Stevie. Feels so good when I’m just filled up with you, and there’s nothin’ else. I don’t have to be anything else. Just yours."

"Buck," Steve sighs, trying so hard to keep his eyes on Bucky’s face. His beautiful, beautiful face with his sweet, full lips. 

"Fill me up, c’mon," Bucky says, pulling away from Steve to kneel down between his legs. He looks up at Steve with those big, blue eyes, his lips an inch away from the tip of Steve’s cock, his hand still moving over it in rough, steady strokes.

Steve thinks for a moment that maybe he just hit the ground hard when he jumped out of that plane in Austria, and wound up in Heaven instead. 

"I need it, Stevie, please."

Steve’s eyes squeeze shut, the heat in his gut gone so sharp and tight he can hardly bear it. Can barely breathe when Bucky’s lips wrap around him, soft and wet. Steve's teeth are clenched too tightly to say a word, but in his head it’s just Bucky’s name, again and again.

Bucky doesn’t take him deep, but his tongue flicks against him as he bobs his head—exploring, experimenting—mapping out the new shape of him. He hums low in his throat, and Steve opens his eyes back up to drink in the sight of him, lips stretched wide and eyes almost closed. Blissed out in the middle of a goddamn war because Steve’s cock is on his tongue.

"Jesus, oh Jesus, Buck. I’m—"

"Yeah, yeah, please," Bucky says, hand flying over Steve’s length now. Lips brushing so soft against the head of it. Red against red. "Please, need you in me."

Steve’s not sure if he says anything else after that; everything’s just hot and white. Just Bucky’s strong hand and his perfect lips. His tongue and the soft press of his cheeks.

By the time Steve’s really seeing him again his whole body feels like it’s filled with heated sand, and Bucky’s looking back at him with dark eyes and pale lines of come on his lips and chin. 

"I got most of it," he says.

Steve knows what his body is like now, and he knows that must have been a real mouthful. He caught it in his hand on late nights during the USO tour, pressing his face to his pillow and thinking about Bucky. About how he’d never fucked him without a rubber and he wished that he had.

"C’mere," Steve says. It comes out heavy and slurred, but Bucky smiles and climbs back on top of him, pressing salty lips to Steve’s. "Love you, Buck."

"That’s what I hear."

"We gotta clean up."

"Mhm," Bucky says, but he doesn’t move an inch, just kisses Steve again, and sighs when Steve’s arms wrap around his back. "Five minutes."

"Okay," Steve agrees, pulling Bucky tight against his chest. He can feel the ridges of his ribs and the jut of his hipbones, and it makes something ache inside him.

Everything isn’t okay. There are Nazis, and HYDRA, and things that happened to Bucky that Steve doesn’t know about.

"Love you, too," Bucky murmurs, belatedly but still so welcome. "Gonna tell you that till you’re sick of it." 

"Sap," Steve says, and Bucky’s lips curve up against Steve’s collarbone. 

Everything isn’t okay, but this one thing is so good that Steve doesn’t even know how to make sense of it. 

"Just try’n stop me," Bucky says. His voice is soft. There’s a long scrape along his left cheekbone that Steve touches gently. 

He shakes his head, even though Bucky won’t see it with his eyes closed and his face pressed to Steve’s neck. "I don’t think I will," he says, running his fingers from Bucky’s cheek to the dark tufts of his hair, soft and clean now. 

He knows what their reality is—that endings are sitting around every corner when a world war is raging around them—but he’s losing count now of how many times he’s thought they’d reached the end only to find he was wrong. 

So maybe nothing ever really ends. Maybe one way or another, he and Bucky will just keep beginning. 

Maybe, right now, all that matters is what’s in the middle. Not the start or the close, but Bucky safe against Steve’s chest. Loving him, and letting him know it. 

* * *

The following months are the worst Steve has ever experienced in so many ways, outside of losing his mom. There's so much uncertainty, so much death. So many nights that Bucky makes small, wounded sounds in his sleep, and Steve wraps an arm around him through his bed roll, wishing they would talk about it in the morning. 

They never do, and Bucky never says much about what happened in Kreischberg at all, but he says so many other things—things about Steve, things about the two of them—and in that way they're the best months of Steve's life, too. The war is so ugly, but Bucky is so beautiful, and they aren't lying about what they are anymore. Not to each other. 

"When we’re home," Bucky says, nudging Steve’s knee with his own while they keep watch, late on a frigid December night, "we should find ourselves a real place. One with a yard."

"What’ll we do with it?" Steve asks, just so he can keep hearing Bucky dream out loud. He does this a lot when there’s no one else within earshot, and Steve loves hearing him talk about the future, even if he won’t talk about the past months.

"Whatever we want. Get a dog, maybe? You always liked dogs."

"Just two bachelors and their dog. Nothin’ out of the ordinary."

"Don’t give a fuck," Bucky says, shifting so he’s pressed up next to Steve from knee to hip. "We can live somewhere new, tell ‘em we’re brothers. No one’ll know what we’re doing inside."

"‘Cept the dog," Steve points out. "But he won’t care."

"Exactly," Bucky says. 

Steve can hear the smile in his voice. He leans in just a little more—it’s so dark and so cold, and the rest of their unit know how close Bucky and Steve are anyway—pressing their arms together too while they talk in hushed tones about their little dream house. Big windows for Steve and a new radio for Bucky. Maybe a cat for him, too. An ornery one that Bucky says he’ll name Grant. 

Little pockets of peace and quiet like this are few and far between, but they get Steve through, as the war goes on.

The chances they have to actually get their hands under each other’s clothes are even more rare, but they take them when they can. Heavy kisses with Bucky’s hands up Steve’s shirt and Steve’s down the back of Bucky’s pants when they have just a minute alone. A rushed suckjob behind a tree, or Steve’s leg between Bucky’s in an empty office on base. 

It’s not until January that Steve has his own tent again, but it’s well worth the wait when Bucky slips inside in the middle of the night, and Steve finally gets to undress him completely. Finally gets to feel the heat of him around his fingers, after so many months. 

He hovers over him like he did the very first time they did this, with Bucky bare and flushed, his legs spread around Steve’s hips. He goes so, so slow, drinking in the way Bucky bites his lip, the way he shifts his hips and groans softly as his body spreads open and lets Steve in, inch by inch. No rubber this time, because Steve can’t catch or carry anything.

" _Jesus,_ Stevie," Bucky whispers. "Oh Jesus, that’s good. Would you punch me if I said God bless America right now?"

"You’d deserve it," Steve says with a soft laugh, but he just strokes Bucky’s trembling thighs and keeps carefully easing inside. He moves in and out of him as easy and tender as he can once Bucky whines for him to get going, leaning over him to kiss his sharp cheekbones and the hollows below them. He’s still so thin, and he’s not sleeping enough either. It makes Steve want to kiss him every chance he gets, to give him the only thing he can.

He holds Bucky to his chest as he fucks him through one orgasm and then another, then finally comes himself, with Bucky sweat-soaked and shaking underneath him. Moaning low and dirty when Steve spills and spills inside him. 

Steve takes his time licking him clean after. He kisses him all the way until sunrise.

They go on like this as weeks and countries pass by around them. As HYDRA camps go down and Bucky's weight never really goes up. 

"Just have Doc check you again," Steve says near the end of February. Bucky is shirtless in Steve's tent, but they're not fooling around. Steve's just changing the bandage on Bucky's shoulder where a bullet grazed him the day before. He's mentally documenting every one of his bruises, and the strong lines of his wiry muscles. "You're eating enough now, you oughta be—"

"You ever think maybe you're just fucking the weight right off of me, Rogers?" Bucky says, smiling in a way that sits wrong in Steve's gut, because it doesn't reach his eyes. 

"If you need _anything,_ Buck…" Steve says, refusing to play along. 

"Hey, none of that." Bucky makes his face stern, smoothing the pad of his thumb between Steve's eyebrows, then cupping his face between his hands. "Got everything I need right here."

It's funny how when Bucky says things like that, Steve feels like he's sixteen all over again. Full to the brim with want and hope. Praying that what was in his heart was in Bucky's too.

"Yeah alright, smooth talker," Steve says, ignoring the heat in his cheeks. 

Bucky drops his hands to press his lips to one and then the other. Like he’s making sure it’s clear that he knows exactly what he does to Steve. 

"M’fine, Stevie. Let’s just get this war behind us."

Steve nods, and he doesn’t bring it up again. 

He worries though, always worries, about Bucky, and about the whole damn world. Worries even more when they get a location on Arnim Zola, not long into March. 

He has to force himself to listen to the plans being made around him, the directions Phillips is giving, because the moment Zola’s name is spoken Bucky goes stiff beside him. The tendons in his hands taut and his knuckles white. 

If they were still boys in Brooklyn, Steve would pull him away and kiss him just as soft as he could until the hard lines were smoothed away, but all he can do now is let his shoulder brush Bucky’s and wish this was over already. 

The morning before they leave to intercept Zola’s train, Steve does take Bucky by the wrist and pulls him into a small, seldom used bathroom in the base they’ll be departing from. Locks the door behind them and kisses Bucky up against the wall, wedged between the corner and the little towel rod.

"This’ll be dangerous," he says once he’s left Bucky’s lips swollen. He won’t say anything more than that—won’t ever tell Bucky what he can or can’t do—but God, he wishes he didn’t have to watch him do this. Chase after the scientist who strapped him down and did _something_ to him, whatever it was, by jumping onto the roof of a moving train. 

"My fella’s a fuckin’ tank," Bucky says, getting his fingers just inside the waistband of Steve’s pants. "M’not worried."

"Buck…"

" _You_ gonna stay behind, Steve?"

Steve meets Bucky’s eyes for a long moment before he shakes his head. Of course he isn’t, and of course Bucky won’t either. He’s scared, Steve knows he is, but he’s as brave as they come, and just as stubborn as Steve himself when he wants to be.

"Then give me a nice kiss to keep me warm while we’re out there, huh?"

Steve smiles, quieting the worries in his head and focusing on what’s right in front of him. Playful eyes and soft lips that smile for Steve even though Bucky’s worried too.

"Just a kiss?"

"Ain’t no bed in here, Rogers."

Well, that’s a challenge if Steve ever heard one. He raises his eyebrows at Bucky and sets to work undoing his belt and unzipping his fly for him. Tugging pants and thin underwear all the way down.

"Now what, champ?"

"You’re such a punk," Steve tells him, gripping him just under his ass and lifting him up. Bucky’s legs wrap tight around his waist as Steve pushes him into the wall, pinning him there with his hips. 

"Please tell me you got something we can use," Bucky says, already grinding down against Steve’s clothed cock. 

Steve has absolutely nothing and he looks around wildly, exhaling in relief when he spots a utilitarian jar of hand cream on the pedestal sink, right next to the soap dish. He manages to snag it without letting go of Bucky, hitching him up higher so he can get his own pants open and slick himself up.

"Need me to—?"

"No, no, c’mon. Just do it slow."

Steve still reaches behind Bucky to at least work one finger inside him, steadying him with his other arm looped around Bucky’s back, just below where his shoulders press to the wall. They don’t have much time though, so he’s soon shifting Bucky again and lining himself up. Holding Bucky tight so he can press inside him slow, with shallow thrusts that gradually deepen until Bucky is clutching the whole length of him.

Bucky’s eyes are closed, his eyebrows drawn together and his lips parted on a moan he keeps silent, and Steve just stops and looks at him. Every beautiful detail of him. His warm brown hair, grown out enough again for a hint of his curls to show, and his cheeks, always a little pink from the biting winter winds they spend so much time in, just now beginning to wane as spring draws closer. The dimple in his chin that reminds Steve of when all of Bucky was a little softer, a little rounder. 

He wishes so desperately that he could turn around right now, with Bucky in his arms, and find their bright little apartment around them. Their Murphy bed folded down and waiting for him to set Bucky on it, the way Bucky used to carry Steve over and lay him down. He wants to kiss Bucky breathless on a soft pillow, in a warm room, with home outside their windows. 

"Steve, please…"

Bucky’s eyes are open again. Warm and hungry like the plea in his voice that Steve has been falling to his knees for his entire life. Steve kisses him, in this cold, dim little room, and he tastes it there on Bucky’s tongue. Feels it in Bucky’s legs around him, and the soft puff of his breath, and the perfect heat of him around Steve’s cock.

He feels home, right here between them.

" _Please,_ Stevie, you gotta—"

"Shh, sweetheart," Steve hushes him, kissing him once more to feel the way his lips are shivering, just from the stretch of his body around Steve’s cock. "Hold on to me."

Bucky wraps his arms tighter around Steve, one hand gripping his shoulder, the other in his hair. His breath hitches the first time Steve pulls out and drives back in. He presses his face to Steve’s neck with a muffled cry on the next thrust.

"I’ve got you, Buck," Steve whispers to him, pressing gentle kisses to his temple and the shell of his ear while he fucks him hard and steady. 

He wishes he could strip Bucky bare and kiss every inch of him. Rub his cheek against the hair on his chest the way he used to when his own face was only ever smooth. 

"When we’re home... when we’re home I’m gonna spend entire weeks just kissing you, Buck."

"Y-yeah?"

Steve nods, adjusting his hold on Bucky so he can get one hand between them and catch Bucky’s cock in his grip. 

"We’ll never get dressed. I’ll always be inside you."

"You—Jesus _fuck,_ Stevie… you’re so deep."

"Too much?" 

"No, fuck, no… don’t stop."

"I won’t," Steve says, pulling Bucky down when he drives in, and hissing at the way Bucky’s ass clenches so tight around him, the way he pulls desperately at Steve’s hair. 

"God, oh God… you’re breaking me," he gasps.

"Buck—"

"Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t—"

Steve doesn’t stop, even after Bucky’s voice cracks and he goes soundless. Even after he jerks violently in Steve’s hold and spills over his hand in heavy pulses that go on and on. He holds him even tighter, then. Pins Bucky hard between the wall and his cock. Pushes in and in until there’s no possible way to get deeper, and Bucky’s cheeks are streaked with tears. 

Bucky whispers, "Thank you," and Steve loses it. Falls hard over the edge with his lips pressed to Bucky’s, his hips shaking between the soft skin of Bucky’s thighs as his cock throbs inside him. Filling him and dripping between them when Steve starts to move again. Slow, slow thrusts with his forehead resting against Bucky’s, until he finally goes soft. 

He pulls out carefully. Gently eases Bucky down until his feet are back on the floor, then sinks to his knees to kiss the sharp lines of Bucky’s hips while he rubs his legs. Massaging the muscles of his calves and his thighs. Brushing his nose through the thatch of curls around his cock and the hair trailing up to his navel. He kisses the baby soft skin of his belly, humming when Bucky’s hands come to rest in his hair.

"I love you," Steve says, looking up at him.

"Gotta be on your knees to say that?" Bucky asks, voice low and sleepy. "Or do you got something you wanna ask me?"

Steve smiles, leaning his face into Bucky’s palm when Bucky strokes his cheek. "Wanted to marry you my whole life, Buck. Figure I’ll ask you real nice when we get home."

"Good, ‘cause if you do it in a goddamn bathroom I’m sayin’ no."

And if he does it somewhere else—right next to the ocean somewhere when the war is over, or the edge of the Grand Canyon, or maybe just in the little backyard Bucky dreamed up for them—Bucky'll say yes. Doesn't matter that they couldn't be official and legal about it, just the thought of it fills Steve's stomach up with butterflies and his chest up with light. 

He gets to his feet and kisses Bucky soundly. "Not yet, then. Just a little longer," he says. 

Bucky's face is so sweet and flushed. He's so goddamn bright and beautiful, and he's _Steve's—_ he always has been.

"I'll be waiting."

Steve beams and hugs Bucky tight, breathing him in deep as he can—his sweat and his hope and his fear—while Bucky whispers into his hair. _Love you,_ and _Stevie,_ with warm presses of his lips in between.

Steve’s never much liked waiting for anything, but if it’s like this—if it’s for something so unbearably, unbelievably good—he doesn’t mind at all.

* * *

Eventually they have to let go and put themselves back together, kissing once more before they leave the bathroom one at a time, and slip into place with the rest of the Howling Commandos.

They’re focused now, intent on their mission, but even as they stand apart in the ice-capped glory of the Eastern Alps—a train approaching far below them—Steve feels something golden stretching between them. 

And for a moment, unasked for, he feels the tenuousness of it under the weight of everything around them. He feels the prickling fear of it, of standing on the cusp of something bigger than them once again. Something they can’t be sure will leave them still side by side once they’re through it. 

"Buck," he says, just before he jumps, looking over his shoulder to catch Bucky’s eye.

Bucky nods at him, and that’s enough. Steve grips the handles of the pulley above him and leaps off the overhang into the biting wind, knowing Bucky will be right behind him. 

At least if they have to charge into the cold and the unknown—on the heels of the very man who left a mark on Bucky that Steve still doesn't know how to find, how to mend—at least they're doing it together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi can I keep being a broken record? Anyone who has been commenting, please know that you are sustaining my soul in these very trying times, and I thank you. 
> 
> I'll see you this weekend for the final chapter ❤


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky is dressed in black, and his left arm gleams silver. The arm Steve used to sleep under, the fingertips he’s kissed, that little scar Bucky got from climbing fences with Steve—those are gone. His hair is down to his shoulders, tangled and unwashed. His eyes are afraid. 
> 
> "Please," Steve says, when he’s right in front of Bucky, lifting his hand slowly until his fingers brush Bucky’s cheek. "Please know me. You’ve always known me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter does include the fall from the train, and the crash of the Valkyrie, so if you prefer not to read that please go ahead and skip to the second set of asterisks. You'll miss very little (about 400 words) because I'm not here to write about Steve and Bucky being apart...this story is all about them coming together ❤

When Bucky falls, he falls alone.

They make it onto the train together, and inside of it, but they’re split up after that. Closed off in separate train cars with bullets flying. When Steve finally manages to get back to Bucky he thinks they’re almost there, they’ll shut this down between the two of them, but then the side of the train is blown wide open by the cannon blast of a HYDRA guard. 

They’re both knocked off their feet and before Steve has even blinked Bucky is back up—standing fierce and unafraid, with Steve’s shield raised in one hand and a pistol in the other.

It isn’t enough. Another shot from the cannon sends him flying out of the wrenched open side of the car. Steve takes the guard out and runs to Bucky, but that isn’t enough either. He can’t reach him. He can’t wrap his hand around Bucky’s, or touch his face, or take him in his arms and kiss away the terror in his eyes. 

He can only watch the rail Bucky clings to break away from the fractured body of the train, and cry out his name as Bucky breaks away with it. 

His entire past and future dropping into a jagged expanse of ice. His heart and his hope winking out like a smothered flame. 

He watches him until the rocks and snow have swallowed Bucky whole, and his screams are only inside of Steve’s head.

This, he knows, is really the end. 

* * * 

When Steve falls, he falls alone too. 

He’s done all he can. Zola’s been captured, Schmidt’s been taken out, and all that’s left is to set the Valkyrie down where its belly full of bombs can’t hurt anyone. Not even Steve, because he can’t be hurt anymore.

He’s been numb since the moment he lost Bucky. He’s already frozen before he breaks the surface of the Arctic Ocean and drops beneath it like a stone. 

In the long, quiet moments before the last bits of warmth are drained away, he prays that he’ll wind up wherever Bucky is. They’ve killed and they’ve protected and he doesn’t know what any of that means for their souls, but Heaven or Hell, it doesn’t matter. 

He prays that maybe two endings can add up to a beginning, and he’s comforted, as the darkness seeps into the last bits of his awareness, by the certainty that his soul will know Bucky’s when they meet again. 

* * * 

The problem—Steve finds, when he wakes up in neither Heaven nor Hell but something in between—is that Bucky doesn’t know Steve. 

It takes Steve two years to find out Bucky made it into a whole new century just like he did, and Bucky looks at him with clouded, grey eyes that only narrow in confusion when Steve says his name.

"Who the hell is Bucky?" he asks, and Steve thinks maybe all of this has broken him after all. Maybe it’s not Bucky. Maybe Steve’s just seeing what he wants, because _all he wants—_ all he’s wanted every goddamn day since he woke up—is to see Bucky again.

"He’s not your friend anymore," Sam tells him later, gentle and firm. 

Bucky is the Winter Soldier. Has been since Steve didn’t catch him, didn’t save him or dive out of the train to fall with him like he should have, and why didn’t he? Why the hell didn’t he, when he was put on this fucking earth to be there when Bucky needed him?

"It wasn’t your fault," Natasha says, just like Peggy had. 

Steve knows, though. He knows Bucky was trusting him and Steve failed him. He knows this is a miracle, this chance to try again. 

Bucky was gone before Steve could even repeat his name, but they’re brought back together before long. Steve is Bucky’s mission now, and Bucky is his.

"Your name is James Buchanan Barnes," he says on the Helicarrier he’s supposed to be hijacking. He’ll do it, he has to, but he has to do this too. "Bucky, you’re… look at me, Buck," he says, taking careful steps closer and closer.

Bucky is dressed in black, and his left arm gleams silver. The arm Steve used to sleep under, the fingertips he’s kissed, that little scar Bucky got from climbing fences with Steve—those are gone. His hair is down to his shoulders, tangled and unwashed. His eyes are afraid. 

"Please," Steve says, when he’s right in front of Bucky, lifting his hand slowly until his fingers brush Bucky’s cheek. "Please know me. You’ve always known me."

Bucky shakes his head and takes a step back. He hits Steve when he tries to get close again. He hits him over and over when Steve has set the chip in place to reset the programming in the Helicarrier. When it's being fired upon, and Project Insight is going up in flames, and the only thing that matters is that Bucky still doesn’t know his name.

He’s killing Steve, and that’s okay, because if the only alternative is Steve killing Bucky, there’s really no alternative at all.

"Finish it," he says, looking up at Bucky with metal digging into his back and Bucky’s hand clenched in the front of his suit. He’s not even really seeing the sparks flying, glinting off Bucky’s raised metal fist.

He’s seeing Bucky above him in their bed, riding him for the first time with his chest flushed pink. Bucky leaning over him to kiss him, with soft curls brushing Steve’s skin. Bucky laughing on a Sunday afternoon when they’ve stayed in bed all day. Eyes closed and dust motes dancing in the sun around him. 

"It’s okay, Buck. You’re okay. I’ll be waiting for you."

Bucky shakes his head, his fist clenching, and Steve tries to smile at him even though it tugs at the split in his lip. They’ll find each other again, he’s sure of it. Even if his soul has to wait a century more. 

"I’m with you, till the end of the line."

Something opens up in Bucky’s face, something raw and aching that drives into Steve’s chest, and then everything around them breaks. Steve doesn’t have time to think of this as an ending before he’s unconscious, but he doesn’t believe in endings anymore anyway.

He wakes thinking he really has reached Heaven this time. He’s leaning back against a solid chest, with a heavy arm wrapped around him. Metallic fingers stroking through his hair. He’s soaking wet and streaked with mud, and Bucky’s lips are pressed to the top of his head. 

"Buck?" he croaks, his throat burning. They’re on the bank of a river and he should probably be in a hospital instead, but not one part of him wants to move.

"I don’t… you’re Steve."

"Yeah," Steve says.

"I don’t know what’s… this isn’t what I’m supposed to do, but I… _I can’t."_

"Can’t what?"

"I can’t kill you. I can’t leave you."

Steve’s tears are warm on his cheeks when they fall, and it sets off a stabbing pain in his chest but he manages to move his hand and rest it on Bucky’s, right over Steve’s heart.

"I’m real glad to hear that, Buck," Steve says.  
  
He passes out again with Bucky holding him tight. Holding him even though he’s not sure why. 

That’s more than enough for Steve. 

* * * 

There’s a long road to walk after that, but they make their way along it together, step by step. Bucky gets Steve to the hospital, Steve gets Bucky to stop slipping out the window anytime someone comes into the room. 

There are beginnings upon beginnings, so many Steve feels rich with them. There’s Bucky agreeing to meet Tony, and Sam, and Natasha. The little family Steve has been building here while he’s tried to keep himself going without his heart. There’s Steve agreeing to rest for a while, even though there are things that need to be done. People who need to be helped. 

"Wouldn’t kill you to take it easy for once, would it, Cap?" Tony says when he shows Steve and Bucky to a suite of rooms in the Tower, and Steve feels Bucky watching. Silently agreeing. "The elderly need to be gentle with themselves, after all."

Bucky snorts, and it makes Steve’s heart light. He looks at him out of the corner of his eye as the elevator takes them up and up.

His hair is clean and tied in a little ponytail, as it is most days. He wears Steve's sweatshirt, and the fluffy socks that Natasha keeps buying for him. His muscles are hard and lean, and his lips are as soft as they’ve always been. 

Steve loves the months they spend in the Tower. Eventually he leaves to go on missions every so often, and Bucky leaves for therapy, and for sparring matches with Maria, and mysterious outings with Natasha. They both stay in with Sam, watching baking competitions. They stay in, just the two of them, listening to their favorite old songs. Finding new favorites that Bucky hums along with when he’s kneading dough or folding laundry. 

Tony says they don’t need to do any of those things, there’s always someone who could do it for them, but Bucky likes it. The quiet motions, the accomplishment of something simple and necessary. 

Steve loves watching him find peace.

"Tell me something," Bucky says one night, almost a year into their stay at Tony’s. They’re holding hands, pressed close together under a soft, cable-knit blanket. "Tell me if I’m remembering this right."

He usually is, but he still likes to check, and Steve never minds being the one to say, "Yeah, Buck, that’s exactly right."

"You asked me to marry you, didn’t you? Poorly? In a bathroom?"

"Hey now," Steve says. "I did _not_ ask you."

"No?" Bucky asks, turning to Steve with his eyebrows raised in genuine surprise. 

"I said I _would_ ask you, when we made it home."

"Ah," Bucky says. "That sure took us longer than expected."

Steve nods, running his thumb over the back of Bucky’s hand. "That was right before—"

"I know," Bucky says, cutting Steve off before he can get maudlin about it, and pressing a kiss to his cheek. 

They've talked about this a number of times. About Steve’s perceived responsibility, and Bucky’s certainty that Steve is an idiot. His declaration that he’d have punched him if Steve had jumped off the train after him, with no reason to think Bucky could have survived.

"My own fault for not telling you more about what happened in Kreischberg," he said once.

"Why didn’t you?" Steve had asked, and Bucky had been quiet for a spell.

"I hardly understood what they did to me myself, and you… you would have been a dog with a bone trying to get to the root of it. Trying to fix me when I knew it was already too late."

"I would have driven you crazy, you mean."

"You would have worried yourself sick, and I couldn’t have it."

Steve hadn’t been able to come up with any argument to that. He wouldn’t have chosen to make Bucky worry like that either. He would spare him anything that he could, that’s what he’s always tried to do, and of course Bucky’s always been doing the same for him. 

"What made you think of it?" he asks now. "The almost-proposal."

Bucky just smiles at him, touches his cheek and turns Steve's face so the next kiss he gives him lands soft on his lips.

They’ve been taking it slow, all of this, but it’s been easy to slip back into, a little bit at a time. The first things that came back to Bucky were memories of Steve. He crashed onto Steve’s hospital bed one night, a week after the Helicarrier, hugging him so painfully tight and crying into his neck. Sobbing with relief because he remembered now, when he’d woken up on his back in the Alps, broken and half frozen. He remembered how horribly he missed Steve. How terrified he was that he’d never find his way back to him. 

"Stevie, my Stevie," he’d cried, and Steve had held him close and wept with him. He’d felt something coming alive in himself that had gone so cold and still when Bucky fell away from him

"I’m here, sweetheart," he’d said, and Bucky only ever slept next to him after that.

It took time to work up to other things, all the things they learned to do together so many years ago. Seven months into their time at the Tower, Bucky pulled Steve into the shower with him and let Steve wash his hair, lathering it up and massaging his scalp gently. He washed Steve’s for him next, then ran his hands over Steve’s skin so slowly, pressing his thumbs into the grooves of Steve’s hips. Brushing his fingertips along the underside of his cock. 

"I remember you in my mouth," he said, and Steve's whole body went hot. "Sometime… I want that again."

Steve nodded and took Bucky’s hand in his, kissing him softly under the warm fall of water. There was no need for them to hurry. 

A few weeks after that, Bucky woke him in the night, pressing up against his hip and panting in the silence. 

"Steve… Steve," he’d breathed. "Haven’t felt this in... in so long, I don’t—I want you with me."

"I’m here, I’m right here," Steve said. He held Bucky in the circle of his arms while Bucky tugged his sleep pants low enough to curl his hand around himself. He kissed Bucky’s temple while Bucky gasped at his own touch, while he shook and moaned until he spilled over Steve’s stomach.

He asked to touch Steve’s cock a week or so after that, and watched with wide eyes when it swelled in his hands and Steve came apart for him. A month later Steve spread Bucky’s legs wide under the covers. Knelt down with sunlight filtering through the woven blanket above him, and held him in his mouth while Bucky sighed and stroked Steve’s hair. 

Bucky went down on Steve for the first time just a week ago. Well, the second first time, but that’s the beautiful thing about new beginnings. It made Steve’s lips tingle. It made him put a crack in their handsome wooden headboard.

"Easy, tiger," Bucky had said, grinning up at Steve with spit-slick lips gone rosy red. His hair was free from its usual tie, curling loosely. His jaw dark with stubble and his eyes sharp. He was still Steve’s perfect, beautiful boy, and he was something new and wondrous too. Something strong as flint and bright as flame. 

He’s soft under Steve’s lips now, curled up against him under the blanket on the wide, leather chair they love to share. 

"I was just thinking about home," he says. "About Brooklyn."

"You want to go back? Go find the old place?"

Bucky shakes his head. "The new one. The one with the yard."

" _Oh,"_ Steve says, and it’s 1944 again. There's just a sliver of a moon, and Bucky is painting pictures with his words in the dark, and Steve is so desperately in love. That hasn’t changed a bit. "And the dog."

Bucky nods, his lip caught between his teeth in a nervous, hopeful smile. It’s funny, the habits he’s held onto even with the new ones he’s developed. Steve loves seeing the little things he recognizes. He loves learning the things he doesn’t. 

"Let’s see what we can find," he says, and Bucky doesn’t stop smiling even as he kisses him again.

* * * 

The new house is not actually new at all, it’s nearly as old as Steve and Bucky are, but it’s been reworked and remodeled over the years, just as they have. It has the windows Bucky wanted for Steve, and the yard Steve wanted for Bucky. It has ivy trailing up brickwork, and a wild, overgrown garden that Bucky refuses to tame. 

They’re settled in by late spring and Bucky sits out there for hours, letting the sun fall over him with his eyes closed and his palms pressed to the grass. The cat weaves around him and noses at the pansies and snapdragons. Bucky named her Grant, because of course he’d never forget that he swore he would.

The dog’s name was left up to Steve. He’s a gangly, affectionate piebald Boxer with pale blue eyes, and Steve never thought of calling him anything but Jamie. 

"Buck," he calls, on a late May evening that’s starting to cool and darken. Bucky has been quiet out there in the garden for so long. Sometimes when he doesn’t talk it’s just because he’s meditating or feeling pensive, but sometimes he gets trapped in his head and his words can’t come out, so Steve likes to check in. "Bucky?"

Bucky turns, looking over his shoulder towards the back porch where Steve sits with Jamie sprawled out over his feet. "Bed time?" he asks.

"If you’re ready. I’ll stay out if you’re not."

Bucky stretches his arms above his head, then holds out a hand to Grant, stroking her cheek when she trots over to rub against him. She’s ornery as anything with the rest of the world, but not with Bucky. 

"Let’s see what you drew," Bucky says, after getting to his feet and strolling up the lawn to Steve. 

They go inside together, and Steve sets a record playing while Bucky flips through the last few additions in Steve’s little sketchbook. Brushing his fingers over bright sunflowers, and the curled form of Grant, and Bucky’s own broad shoulders. All captured with the soft colored pencils Bucky picked up for Steve as part of his housewarming present. 

"You don’t have to draw me every time," he says, but he’s smiling like he’s pleased that Steve always does. 

"Don’t have to, but I want to," Steve tells him. He sets the sketchbook aside so he can take Bucky’s hand and lead him up the stairs to their bedroom. They can still hear the music playing down below, soft and nostalgic.

This is one of their routines, something they started doing at Tony’s to help Bucky relax at night. First the music, then Bucky sitting on their bed with Steve behind him, gently working his fingers through Bucky’s hair. Weaving it into a loose crown of braids the way Natasha taught him to, then kissing the nape of his neck, and then his right shoulder, and then his left. 

"I love you," he says with his lips brushing the cotton of Bucky’s t-shirt.

Bucky hums and leans back into him, shifting with him till they’re lying down. Steve holding Bucky the way Bucky held him when he pulled him from the river. 

"Love you, Stevie," Bucky says, already half asleep. He’s heavy in Steve’s arms. He’s a work of goddamned art in the darkness, the light from the hallway kissing the edge of his cheekbone, the corner of his jaw. 

In the morning he’s even more beautiful. His braids loosened and soft, locks of hair fallen out of place to frame his face. His cheeks are still flushed from sleep, even when Steve has left and come back with a big mug of honeyed tea for them to share. 

"Tell me something," Bucky says when they’ve almost finished it, and Steve smiles at what has become such a familiar phrase. "Our first time—I mean, the first time we, you know..." He raises his eyebrows at Steve until Steve laughs and nudges Bucky with his foot. "It was raining, wasn’t it?"

"That’s right."

"And I was... I was upset, because you’d done something stupid and dangerous."

Steve feels his eyebrows draw together. "It was an _accident."_

"Sure."

"It was!"

Bucky grins, in that bright boyish way that Steve fell in love with eighty-odd years ago, and touches Steve’s face. "You wanted to make me feel better."

Steve nods, his breath catching at the brush of Bucky’s thumb over his lips. 

"You’re pretty good at that."

"I—I try," Steve says. "What's this about, Buck? Did… do you want me to make you feel better now?"

Bucky shakes his head, and Steve tries not to react. They haven’t gone far beyond touching each other with their hands and mouths, and that’s okay. He thought maybe, maybe since Bucky brought it up… but it's really okay. He doesn’t want Bucky to think he’s disappointed.

"Alright," Steve says. "Sorry, I—"

"You make me feel better all the time, Captain Dumbass."

Steve glares at Bucky and tries not to smile. Sam taught him the term dumbass, and Bucky is certain it was invented specifically for Steve. 

"What I meant was…" Bucky’s tongue darts out to wet his lips, and Steve knows this face—the tilt of Bucky’s eyebrows and the vulnerable set of his chin. Bucky wants something. He wants Steve.

"Buck?"

"I wanna make _you_ feel better, Stevie. I want—I want to make you feel what you make me feel. What you've always made me feel."

"You want… Buck, you don’t need to—"

"When does anyone ever really take care of you?"

"I don’t—"

"No, listen," Bucky cuts him off with a frown and a shake of his head. "It’s your own damn self-sacrificial fault, probably, but you’ve spent your whole life worrying about what I need, what everyone else needs, and I want... when does Steve Rogers ever just _let go_ , huh? Tell me that."

"Taking care of you takes care of me too, Buck. Feels just as good for me as I think it does for you, I swear to God."

Bucky’s frown smooths away and he nods his head, his lips soft and satisfied. "Good. Then it will feel just as good for me when I take care of you, won’t it?"

"Are… are you saying you want to fuck me?" Steve asks, feeling a little turned around by all this talk so soon after waking up. Feeling a little dizzy with desire at the implications. A few days ago Bucky got himself off by grinding his cock between Steve’s pectoral muscles while Steve just flexed for him and watched, and that alone sent him into something close to cardiac arrest. "Because you don’t gotta convince me, you can just—"

"I’m not _just_ going to fuckyou, Rogers," Bucky says, and suddenly Steve’s been pushed flat on the bed, and Bucky is looking down at him. The little flyaway hairs that have escaped his braid gilded by the morning sun at his back. 

"Oh?" Steve says. He’s not exactly breathless, his lungs are too good at their job now, but the anticipation dancing over his skin carries the same feeling with it. Bucky’s left hand is spread across his chest and Steve can feel the latent power in it. The way Bucky presses just hard enough to restrain.

Bucky’s body has changed, in the last seventy years. Not exactly the way Steve’s has, but similarly. It’s powerful, and lithe, and aging just as slowly as Steve’s. It’s almost as if, as restitution for all of the loss and the pain, they were given this one thing. They were made to match. 

"You never just fucked me, did you?" Bucky goes on, his voice gentle now, thoughtful. "I don’t remember everything we did, but I remember… I know how I felt."

Steve shakes his head—it was never just about sex, not from the very first time Steve knelt in front of Bucky and took him in his hand. It was about finding the deepest need in Bucky and kissing away the ache of it. Filling him up with heat until anything that hurt him was burned off, until everything inside of him was bright and good. Until there was no space left, no awareness of anything except how goddamn precious he was to Steve.

"No, I... I loved you. I was always just loving you."

"Right," Bucky smiles. "That’s what I remember. You got right into my blood and my bones. You loved me so hard they couldn’t get you out of me."

Steve swallows thickly. "You’re in me like that too."

"I know," Bucky says, folding over Steve to kiss his lips. "We’re made of each other, Stevie."

Steve nods, tipping his chin up for another kiss, and sighing when Bucky gives it to him. Licks gently over Steve’s lips, then slowly between them until Steve can taste the honey on Bucky’s tongue.

"I wanna fuck you till that’s all you know. Till it's just me in you… nothing else."

"Okay," Steve says, and he does sound breathless even though he has to assume his lungs are still working as they should. It’s hard to really register anything but the heat of Bucky’s body and the gravel in his voice.

He sits up for Bucky when he starts to pull Steve’s shirt up, and they undress each other slowly. Pausing again and again to press lips to shoulders, to skim hands over ribs and hips and thighs. Steve is on his back again by the time they’re both completely bare, Bucky kneeling between his legs with slick fingers and eyes lit up bright. He’s pulled the elastic out of his hair so it falls in loose waves past his shoulders, brushing so soft over Steve’s skin when he dips to kiss the center of Steve’s chest. 

"I didn’t finger you very often, did I?" he asks, running the knuckles of a loose fist up and down Steve’s half-hard length. "Unless I’ve just forgotten."

"No, you’re right. I usually fingered you."

Bucky bites his lip. Drags his knuckles down to rub over Steve’s perineum with his eyes still on his face. "I liked it."

"So did I," Steve smiles.

"You liked having me inside you, too." Bucky’s knuckle skims lower to nudge against Steve’s hole, and Steve’s cock twitches, stiffening further just from that light touch. It’s been… a long, long time. 

He nods his head, barely resisting the urge to press his ass closer to Bucky’s hand. "Loved being touched by you, Bucky. Any way at all."

"I do remember… once…" Bucky pauses, shifting so he can lean close to Steve while he strokes over his entrance with the pad of one finger. "I don’t know exactly when, but your bangs were so long they were always in your eyes, and you… God you were always so pretty, Stevie." 

Steve doesn’t remember exactly when that was either, and it’s hard to focus on dates at all when Bucky’s saying sweet things and pressing his finger into Steve. Letting it rest there, just up to the first knuckle.

"You were sucking me off, looking up at me with your hair all in your face, and I had my finger in you, just like this." 

Now that Bucky’s pulled up the details of it, Steve remembers too. The stretch of his lips and the sweat rolling down his spine. Bucky brushing the hair off his forehead for him, then gripping it tight in his hand. It was the first time Bucky had ever fingered him, and having Bucky in his mouth and his ass at once made Steve come apart faster than he ever had. 

He nods his head, humming when Bucky nudges his finger in deeper and flicks his tongue over Steve’s nipple. 

"It was just my fingertip, and you were clenching around it like it was everything, and I thought…"

"What did you— _ah,_ _Buck,"_ Steve gasps when Bucky closes his lips around Steve’s nipple and sucks it between his teeth. "Jesus."

Bucky releases the reddened bud and runs his tongue over it gently as he looks up at Steve. 

"I thought… _maybe I’m his world, too."_

Steve already finds himself without words, with only a sweet, heavy aching in his chest, and then Bucky pushes his finger in deep just as he takes Steve's nipple between his teeth again, and Steve can only moan for him.

"Loved you so much I couldn’t stand it sometimes," Bucky says, his breath cool against the wet, heated skin of Steve's chest. His finger slipping out and back in again. "Still do."

"Buck," Steve breathes, wanting to say that it’s all the same for him, that it always has been. Bucky’s so unbearably gorgeous though, looking down at him with his eyes a bright, clear blue and his smile so true and soft, and Steve can only blink at him like he’s looking right up at the sun.

"Shh," Bucky says, kissing Steve’s lips and crooking his finger inside him. "Just shut up and let me love you."

When Steve nods quickly, Bucky smiles against his lips. Deepens the kiss and licks into Steve’s mouth while his finger moves in and out of his ass. He keeps it slow, keeps Steve aching in anticipation for each time he shifts the angle to graze Steve’s prostate. Keeps going and going while he kisses Steve’s lips swollen, until Steve can’t stop himself anymore from rocking hard into Bucky’s hand, wordlessly asking for more.

Bucky chuckles as he draws out to finally press two fingers back inside, catching Steve’s tender lip between his teeth and tugging lightly. 

"Always knew you’d be a bossy bottom."

"I didn’t say anything!" Steve protests, which just earns him a light swat on his ass. "I just need—"

"Think I don’t know what you need, Stevie?"

"I… no," Steve says, shaking his head. "I know you do. You know."

"That’s right," Bucky says, and he smiles when Steve relaxes again under his hands, not trying to take more than Bucky’s giving him. Sighing when Bucky goes right back to nibbling at Steve’s lips, fucking him slowly on his fingers. 

He always had twice the patience that Steve did, except when they were in bed and he was begging Steve for what he needed. It’s strange, having it turned around now. Having Bucky tenderly taking Steve apart in a new way. Bucky kissing him so breathless his thoughts are whiting out and he’s left with just the hum of want in his blood, with need throbbing in his core. Deepening with every stroke of Bucky’s fingers. Taking him back to that long ago afternoon in his bed when Bucky cupped his neck and brought their lips together for the first time. When Bucky knew that Steve needed him too.

"Buck," Steve says, his fingers twisting tight in Bucky’s hair, wanting him closer. 

Bucky hums and lets Steve pull him in so they’re chest to chest, but he doesn’t slow or rush the steady movements of his hand. He sucks on the side of Steve’s neck, fills him up with three fingers, over and over, then leaves him empty to tease at his rim instead. Circling it and pressing just the tips of his fingers in, while Steve’s pulse thuds in his ears and his cock drips and drips onto his stomach.

"Is that good, Stevie?" Bucky asks. A sweet, low rasp next to Steve’s ear that makes Steve’s muscles jump and sends heat shivering under his skin. It makes his eyes fill up with tears too, because there's that same, familiar need in Bucky's voice—the soft, open desire that Steve spent years melting him down to—even though it's Bucky turning Steve to putty in his hands.

"Yes, _Buck,_ it's—it's—" He's panting, grasping at Bucky's hip, at his hair, and Bucky soothes him with warm kisses as he slips his fingers out.

"I know," he says, pressing Steve’s legs wide apart, and finally nudging the head of his cock against Steve’s entrance, hot and slick and blunt. "I know, sweetheart, I'm here. Let me in."

Steve bears down and lets out an unfamiliar sound, high and cracked open, when Bucky slips right inside of him. Presses in all at once till his hips are flush against Steve's skin, and Steve is so perfectly full. Tears spilling over his cheeks and hands clutching Bucky's back when Bucky shifts inside him with a gasp.

"Steve… oh, sweetheart," he whispers again, stroking Steve's hair while Steve just keeps trying to catch his breath. Overwhelmed by everything Bucky's making him feel with his body hot inside Steve's, with his gentle, metal fingers moving over him. His sugar sweet breath calling Steve his own. 

Bucky was always Steve’s sweetheart, but now Steve is Bucky’s. Steve is flushed and trembling for him. Steve is clenching around his cock and aching for more and he loves it—the rush of heat and comfort and wonder that comes from being known so well. Being loved so goddamn well.

"Gotta move, Stevie," Bucky says. "You're... Jesus, I thought your mouth was heaven, but this is—"

Steve gathers himself enough to show Bucky that he’s ready, arching his back to press himself harder against Bucky’s hips. It brings Bucky in just a little deeper and Steve cries out at the way he fills Steve, the way he moans into the crook of Steve's neck and curls his left hand in Steve's hair.

"Okay?" Bucky asks, double checking before he does anything. HYDRA may have tried and tried to turn him into something hard, but Bucky Barnes has a heart that's a mile wide, and they couldn't do a thing to change that. 

"Yeah, yeah," Steve says, shifting his hips again. "M'ready, you feel perfect, Buck. You're... hah _, God."_

Bucky was perfect when he was just buried deep inside Steve, but now he's moving—drawing out slowly and pushing back in so his cockhead drags over Steve's prostate—and Steve doesn't know what the word for this is. He doesn't know if it's even Bucky's cock in him that's making everything light up so bright he's dizzy with it, or if it's just that Bucky's _here,_ that they're both here, and Bucky's touching him like Steve's the only thing that's ever mattered and ever will. 

He keeps kissing Steve, keeps pressing up closer to him. Pulls him right into his arms and sits up so he's on his knees with Steve in his lap.

Steve is nearly two hundred and fifty pounds of enhanced bone and muscle, but Bucky is strong and sturdy underneath him. He holds Steve with one hand tight on his ass and the other supporting his back, keeping him close so Steve's cock is pressed between Bucky's stomach and his own. 

When Steve rolls his hips Bucky tightens his grip and stills him. "Let me," he says, holding Steve steady and fucking up into him, then sliding his cock out slowly and doing it again, and again. 

Each snap of his hips sets off a burst of light behind Steve's eyes. Each drag of his own cock against Bucky's skin floods him with a heat so heavy he's not sure he could stay upright without Bucky's help. It's too much and not enough all at once, and he's shaking with it, moaning every time Bucky slips out and then splits him open again. Crying out when Bucky pulls him down hard into his lap and keeps him there, just grinding up into him with his mouth open at Steve's throat, hot breath and grazing teeth. 

"Bucky, Bucky, please," Steve gasps, but he's not trying to move away, only pulling Bucky closer. Biting his own lip as Bucky mouths over Steve's chest, pressing wet kisses to his nipple while Steve is held open on his cock and wrapped up in his arms. 

Bucky's everywhere, the heat and scent and promise of him. All over Steve's skin and so deep inside of him. His lips are at Steve's ear, saying his name, saying soft, sweet things while he curls a hand around Steve's aching cock. Trails heated, metal fingers down Steve's spine and finds the place where they're joined. Where Steve is stretched open for him, twitching and clenching for him. 

"My love," Bucky breathes, tracing Steve's rim and rubbing his thumb over his leaking slit.

Steve has never let himself come before Bucky was ready to come with him, but he doesn't even try to stop himself when pleasure grips him so tightly he can hardly breathe. He falls into it with a cry and lets it sweep him away. Lets Bucky hold him and kiss him and stroke his cock while Steve spills and spills between them.

" _Yes,_ Stevie, yes," Bucky says, and Steve wants to say it too but he's speechless and shaking, spasming around the solid length of Bucky still inside him. He's moving backwards suddenly as Bucky lowers him down, kissing him hungry and desperate the moment Steve's flat on the mattress. "Can I—"

"Yes," Steve finally manages, and Bucky's moving while the word is still on Steve's tongue. Fucking Steve with delicious, forceful drags of his cock that have Steve gasping, his nerves still singing as his climax hangs on and on.

"God, fuck," Bucky rasps. " _Stevie,_ will you…" His voice breaks away, but he’s arching his back, his cock grinding into Steve and his ass pressing out in a way Steve knows so well. He's all red lips and sweet, entreating eyes, and Steve's chest aches at the sight of him. At the glory of having him and loving him. Of finding beginning after beginning with him. "Please?"

"Yeah, Buck," Steve says, wetting his finger with the slick he's left all over his own skin. Reaching behind Bucky to find the soft pucker of his entrance, and pressing right in.

Bucky's eyebrows crease as his eyes fall shut, and he slams back into Steve. Fucks him with quick, short thrusts that are edging on too much for Steve with everything going sharp and oversensitive.

Steve wants it to last and last. He wants to drink in the burn of it, swallow down the way Bucky looks now—fever bright cheeks and parted lips, breathless at being caught between the heat of Steve's ass and the press of his hand. 

But he knows Bucky's body, knows the sudden catch of his breath and the flutter of his rim around Steve's finger, and he wants this too. 

" _Stevie,"_ Bucky cries, and Steve's already lifting his head to meet Bucky's trembling lips. Catching his shuddering moans on his tongue and letting his own rise from his chest as Bucky fills him with his release. Pulse after pulse so it feels like enough to reach every part of him. To trace through each vein, hot and bright and cleansing. Marking every bone in his body as Bucky's.

Eventually Bucky goes still on top of him and they're not kissing anymore, just breathing against each other. Breathing each other right in.

"Christ," Bucky says against the corner of Steve's mouth, then whines a little as Steve slips his finger out of him. 

"Tell me something," Steve says, blinking up at him with heavy eyelids and what he knows is a stupid smile all over his face. 

Bucky smiles right back at him. His hair is wild and tangled from Steve's hands. His eyelashes dark and wet. "What?"

"How was it? Taking care of me?"

Bucky's lips twitch and he presses them to Steve's before leaning back to study him, sprawled out under Bucky, bright with sweat and satisfaction.

"I think… you're right," Bucky says. "It's the same thing. Taking care of you is taking care of me."

Steve nods, it's what he's always known. They're woven around each other too tightly for it to be anything else.

"I loved it."

"Me too," Steve says, reaching up to brush his thumb over the cleft of Bucky's chin. 

"I love you."

Steve blinks tears out of his eyes and cups Bucky's cheek, drawing him down to kiss him again. To whisper the same words against his lips, because he can never say them enough. Not after all the times he held them on his tongue when they were young and afraid. Not after the years he thought he'd never get a chance to say them again.

He pulls Bucky even closer, hands pressed to the sun-warmed skin of his back, and says it over and over with Bucky still held inside of him. With the bed they chose together soft underneath them, and the home they found together safe over their heads.

He says it until Bucky is laughing and kissing him quiet, and then he keeps saying it with his lips, his hands, his heart, because nothing can stop him. Nothing can stop them. 

If he's learned one thing through all of these years, through all of these stops and starts, it's this: there will never be an end to their love.

* * *

When Steve asks Bucky to marry him it's in the middle of the yard Bucky dreamed up for them, on a bright July morning, humid and rich with sunlit memories.

He meant what he said, that day he lost Bucky—even though it was in another lifetime, when Steve and Bucky were both different versions of themselves. That doesn't change anything, not for them. 

His love for Bucky is as old as time, kept right down in the marrow of his bones. Kept safe in the corners of Bucky's lips and the lines of his palms. It's brand new every day, lighting up inside him when Bucky writes silly little poems on napkins and leaves them under Steve's cup of coffee to make him smile. When he reads aloud to Steve from a worn, creased paperback they found at a yard sale, his voice low and soft on a quiet afternoon.

It's there in the stillness of the night when Bucky wakes Steve with trembling hands, tucks his head under Steve's chin the way he used to fit Steve under his, and lets Steve stand guard against the ghosts that haunt him. It's in the careful fingers that stroke Steve's hair when Steve is angry, or guilty, or afraid of something he can't name. The lips that kiss his wet cheeks and the gentle voice that sings to him until whatever felt too big feels small again. 

Steve has fallen in love with Bucky a hundred times already, and he'll do it over and over again. Wherever they are. Whenever they are. 

He knew what he wanted, that day he looked up at Bucky from the floor of an Army base and told him it was only a matter of time, and he wants it still. So it starts—this new chapter of their lives—with Steve down on one knee in the middle of Bucky's rainbow of wildflowers. 

It starts with Bucky's pink cheeks and his breathless laugh as he drops to his knees too, before Steve even gets all the words out.

"Took you goddamn long enough," he says with his hands in Steve's hair and his face as sweet as sunshine. 

"You didn't even let me do it right," Steve says, but he doesn't care at all. Bucky is his, and they can tell the whole world if they want to. 

He is Bucky's, and that's all he's ever wanted to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to thank everyone who has been reading along, and interacting on twitter, and commenting here! This is a weird and stressful time, and having this bubble in which all that matters is two super-soldiers in love (and how much we love them) is so important to me. 
> 
> I hope that you're all well, and that you're being patient with yourselves, and that thinking about Steve and Bucky getting married in their backyard—with their closest friends and a million flowers—will make you feel warm and happy ❤❤❤

**Author's Note:**

> You can find my other stucky fics [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&commit=Sort+and+Filter&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=revised_at&include_work_search%5Brelationship_ids%5D%5B%5D=110293&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bexcluded_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bcrossover%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_from%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_to%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_from%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_to%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&fandom_id=586439&user_id=Ellessey), and can find me continually singing their praises (and Sebastian Stan's) on twitter at [elliebbarnes](https://twitter.com/elliebbarnes).


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